THE TRUTH WE SEE

Wealth and Poverty, Part 2

2007-02-05T13:22:00.000-06:00

My sermon is coming together nicely, but I'm still feeling a bit intimidated by the task. My work on this topic, both biblically and historically, has been very personally rewarding even though a lot of what I've uncovered won't actually make it into the sermon. But that's part of why I thought it would be fun to put some of those things here on the blog. Today's thoughts come from a great early theologian from around the turn of the 3rd century, Clement of Alexandria.

As the gospel spread during the early centuries of the church’s existence, there were some Christians who interpreted the words of Jesus regarding the difficulty of a rich person entering the kingdom to mean that all who were rich were excluded from the salvation available in Christ. In response to the turmoil such an interpretation caused, Clement of Alexandria composed his treatise Who is the Rich Man that Shall Be Saved? Clement insisted that the attainment of salvation does not depend upon external matters, such as wealth or poverty, but on the internal condition of the soul. The soul, therefore, must be purified of all disorders which distract it from God. Passionate attachments, such as the attraction of possessions, are among the foremost to be removed. According to Clement, it was not wealth but one’s attitude towards wealth that was destructive. He writes, “He [the rich man] is to banish those attitudes towards wealth that permeate his whole life, his desires, interests, and anxiety. These things become the thorns choking the seed of a true life.”

For Clement, the wealth of the rich was in fact of great benefit if they could overcome this passionate attachment to their possessions. The value of possessions lay in their employment as “alms,” gifts given to provide for the poor. Early Christians had a heightened sensitivity of the need to care for the poor through the giving of alms. Clement writes, “Therefore, we must not throw away the riches that benefit not only ourselves but our neighbors as well. They are possessions because they are possessed, and they are goods because they are good and provided by God to help all people. They are under our control, and we are to use them just as others use materials and instruments in their trade. An instrument, used with skill, produces a work of art…. Wealth is such an instrument. It can be used rightly to produce justice.” He goes on then to address those who have wealth, saying, “Do not regret your possessions, but destroy the passions of your soul that hinder you from using your wealth wisely. Then you may become virtuous and good and use your possessions in the most beneficial ways. The rejection of wealth and selling of one’s possessions is to be understood as the rejection and elimination of the soul’s passions…. It is difficult to keep ourselves from becoming enticed by and dependent upon the life style that affluence offers, but it is not impossible. Even when surrounded by affluence we may distance ourselves from its effects and accept salvation. We center our minds on those things taught by God and strive for eternal life by using our possessions properly and with a sense of indifference toward them.”

Wealth and Poverty in the Early Church

2007-02-01T13:54:00.000-06:00

I'm in the midst of the incredibly complicated task of trying to make sense of Jesus' words concerning wealth and poverty in Luke 6:17-26 for a 21st century affluent suburban mega-church. What was I thinking when I accepted this invitation?

In pulling things together for this sermon I've revisited some research I did a few years ago on wealth and poverty in the early church. I thought I'd do a series of posts to put some of that stuff here in order to see what sort of reactions I might get or at least to stimulate folks who read this to think about these things.

Many writers in the early church discussed issues of wealth and poverty. In its earliest days the church was made up of predominantly poor members, but over time more affluent people began to seek membership in the community of faith. Care for the poor remained a priority of the early church. One of the earliest Christian apologists, Aristides of Athens, appealed to Christian charity in his defense of the faith presented to the emperor:

"They walk in all humility and kindness, and falsehood is not found among them, and they love one another. They despise not the widow, and grieve not the orphan. He that has distributes liberally to him that does not. If they see a stranger, they bring him under their roof, and rejoice over him, as it were their own brother; for they call themselves brethren, not after the flesh, but after the spirit and in God; but when one of their poor passes away from the world, and any of them see him, the he provides for his burial according to his ability; and if they hear of any of their number is imprisoned or oppressed for the name of their Messiah, all of them provide for his needs, and if it is possible that he may be delivered, they deliver him. And if there is among them a man that is poor and needy, and they do not have an abundance of necessities, they fast two or three days that they may supply the needy with their necessary food."

Not exactly the way we “defend the faith” these days is it?

The Manchurian Consumer

2007-01-24T16:26:00.000-06:00

When I can find a few minutes to do some reading that is not directly related to the academic projects I'm working on, I'm reading Kalle Lasn's brilliantly subversive book Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge - And Why We Must (Lasn is also the founder of ADBUSTERS Magazine). I came to the conclusion of his chapter "The Manchurian Consumer" and found the following selection that sounded both chilling and all too familiar:

Richard Condon’s 1959 novel, The Manchurian Candidate – which was turned into a movie Pauline Kael called ‘the most sophisticated political satire ever to come out of Hollywood’ – tells the story of an American soldier who is captured during the Korean War, shipped to Manchuria and groomed, via brainwashing, to become a robotic assassin programmed to kill the U.S. president upon a predetermined verbal command.

The subtext of the movie is that Americans are being depatterned by propaganda systems they may not understand or even be aware of. The modern consumer is indeed a Manchurian Candidate living in a trance. He has a vague notion that at some point early in his life, experiments were carried out on him, but he can’t remember much about them. While he was drugged, or too young to remember, ideas were implanted into his subconscious with a view to changing his behavior. The Manchurian Consumer has been programmed not to kill the president, but to go out and purchase things on one of a number of predetermined commands.

Slogans now come easily to his lips. He has warm feelings toward many products. Even his most intimate drives and emotions trigger immediate connections with consumer goods. Hunger equals Big Mac. Drowsiness equals Starbucks. Depression equals Prozac.

And what about that burning anxiety, that deep, almost forgotten feeling of alarm at his lost independence and sense of self? To the Manchurian Consumer, that’s the signal to turn on the TV.

words: "the paradox of modernity"

2007-01-05T09:14:00.000-06:00

The latest Mars Hill Audio Addenda came to my email inbox last week. The following quote by the late British theologian Colin Gunton was the header for the email:

"Why is it that a world dedicated to the pursuit of leisure and of machines that save labour is chiefly marked by its levels of rush, frenetic busyness and stress? . . . The paradox of modernity... is that however successful the understanding of time and space, the modern is less at home in the actual time and space of daily living than peoples less touched by [modern] changes. . . . Whatever the integration of space and time in science, in modern life there is at once cultural stagnation and febrile change, a restless movement from place to place, experience to experience, revealing little evidence of a serene dwelling in the body and on the good earth."

Colin Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity

On Learning from Nietzsche

2006-12-05T21:29:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite philosophers, Merold Westphal, suggests that Christians should read the great modern atheists Marx, Freud and Nietzsche as a lenten exercise. We need their dissonant voices just as wayward Israel needed the prophets.

I recently came across a quote that I had noted several years ago from Nietzsche's The Antichrist. While there is a certain sense of inadequacy to Nietzsche's statement, there is, nevertheless, something profoundly true about it as well. Nietzsche writes:

"The only thing that is Christian is the Christian mode of existence, a life such as he led who died on the Cross. To this day a life of this kind is possible; for certain men, it is even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible in all ages. To reduce the fact of being a Christian, or of Christianity, to a holding of something for true, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is tantamount to denying Christianity."

Friedrich Nietzsche- The Antichrist

"elloquent bread"

2006-12-01T14:04:00.000-06:00

I recently came accross the following great quote from Gerhard Ebeling's treatment of the petition for daily bread in his book on the Lord's Prayer. Ebeling was a student of Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the illegal seminary at Finkenwalde during WWII. This quote makes evident Ebeling's very Lutheran commitment to the real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper. That God's grace could be present in such an ordinary thing as bread should make us realize that much of what we call ordinary can, in fact, serve us as pointers to the divine and that the modern contrast between physical and spiritual cannot be sustained from a robustly Christian perspective. Ebeling writes:

“Really, though, is anything still matter-of-fact when we are expected to think of God and man as so closely united that even bread, that epitome of the corporeal and commonplace character of human life, is to be thought of at the same time as God, and God at the same time bread? Such thinking in fact puts an end to that deceptive matter-of-factness which prevents us from noticing, hearing, and understanding what everyday things are saying to us. That the things with which we deal have turned dumb and have nothing to say to us, that they have consequently lost their living coherence and become dead objects is a symptom – and certainly not an insignificant one – of our foolishness, our thoughtlessness, our hardheartedness. The result is that we ourselves become increasingly dumb without having anything to say – or it may be, loquacious, also without really having anything to say. The more awake, attentive, and open our hearts become, the more meaningful and eloquent everything around us becomes and the more everything joins together in a single, living coherence. Bread is no longer merely a thing to be regarded in physical or chemical terms, no longer merely a means of nourishment or of enjoyment, but it is eloquent bread, bearing, so to speak, words that concern us. And this is not because it has a voice of its own, as is found in fairy tales, but because God’s word is present in all that is.” – Gerhard Ebeling, The Lord’s Prayer, 60-61.

James K. A. Smith on the Vietnam of the Church

2006-11-30T21:18:00.000-06:00

I recently listened to a great lecture from philosopher James K. A. Smith (homepage, blog) titled "What Does a Public Theology Look Like in 1984." In the lecture, delivered at Regent College, Smith proposes a thought project: what would a Christian theology of public engagement look like in Orwell's dystopia, Oceania? Such a thought project represents a particular challenge to Smith's Reformed tradition, which has historically emphasized the church's participation in and transformation of established social structures. Is such a stance toward culture always a viable alternative?

The subtext of Smith's lecture is that we, in North America, increasingly find ourselves in something akin to an Orwellian society. We find ourselves shaped by our daily immersion in what Smith perceptively calls "secular liturgies" that shape our affections in ways that run counter to Kingdom of God. Our lives begin to mirror the tragedy of Winston learning to love Big Brother.

Ultimately Smith's lecture points toward what he refers to as a "Reformed Monasticism," which he insists isn't a "monasticism of withdrawal" but a "monasticism of engaged resistance."

The lecture, with questions and answers at the end, runs about an hour and a half and can be downloaded from Regentaudio.com for just five Canadian bucks. Very compelling stuff.

One of the most provocative statements in the lecture came during the Q&A. There Smith suggested that "the 'culture wars' is the Vietnam of the church." I think the analogy fits pretty well, sadly enough.

Socializing Kids and Corporations

2006-11-21T22:25:00.000-06:00

I was in Borders today and grabbed the most recent edition of Mother Jones magazine. I was intrigued by a number of the articles listed in the table of contents, but the opening line of Bill McKibben’s piece “Is Corporate Do-Goodery for Real?” was compelling enough to get me to throw down the six bucks necessary to take a copy home. As the father of a soon-to-be two-year-old and a soon-to-be five-year-old, I found the opening paragraph of McKibben’s article terribly alarming but also all too familiar. McKibben writes:

“Ten percent of a two-year-old’s nouns are brand names; by the time an American child heads to school, he or she can recognize hundreds of logos. Disney is now putting its cartoon characters on fresh fruit, arguing (perhaps correctly) that it’s the only way to get kids to eat it. If that’s the world we’re born into, is it any wonder we want corporations to solve our biggest problems as well? Isn’t it a parent’s job to protect us? And besides, who else has the capital and the power to do what needs to be done in the face of a crisis like global warming?”

The whole family thought it was cute the other night when we were driving next to a big mall and our youngest – who, incidentally, is still trying to master the names of everyone in his family – called out “Chuck E. Cheese!” as we drove past the sign that bears the name and likeness of every American kid’s favorite pizza making rat. Cute and terrifying.

But McKibben’s piece is not really about the process of forming children into fully devoted followers of consumer capitalism (for more on that, see Juliet Schor’s insightful and appalling Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture). McKibben’s article is about asking the question of whether or not we can have confidence in the recent rise of corporations with at least the appearance of a conscience.

At one point in the article McKibben takes a shot at the ultimate big-box juggernaut, Wal-Mart, who recently announced that they would start carrying organic produce:

“Often the difficulty is built right into a company’s business model. It makes scant difference whether Wal-Mart starts stocking organic food or not, because the real problem is the imperative to ship products all over the world, sell them in vast, downtown-destroying complexes, and push prices so low that neither workers nor responsible suppliers can prosper. (In fact, Wal-Mart’s decision to sell organic food will almost certainly mean the final consolidation of the industry into the hands of a few huge growers that ship their produce across thousands of miles—not to mention that the people ringing up the organic groceries will still make below-poverty wages and taxpayers will still be footing the bill for their health care. There’s something gross about buying a healthy carrot from a sick company.)”

Predictably, McKibben doesn’t hold out a lot of hope that the corporate powers-that-be, left to their own devices, will rescue us from our ills. He does offer some hope for us, but it’s a hope that requires us to muster up some political moxie:

“‘Will business save the world?’ turns out to be the wrong question. The right question is “How can we structure the world so that businesses play their part in saving it?” And the answer to that, inevitably, is politics…. The strange part is how little opposition the corporate agenda meets anymore—how many of us have accepted the ideological argument that as long as we leave commerce alone, it will somehow, magically, solve all our problems. We could compel Big Oil to take its windfall profits and build windmills; instead we stand quietly by, as if unfettered plunder were the obvious and necessary course…. In the childlike enchantment we’ve lived under since the Reagan era, we’ve wanted very much to believe that someone else, some wavy-haired ceo, would do the hard, adult work of problem-solving. In fact, corporations are the infants of our society—they know very little except how to grow (though they’re very good at that), and they howl when you set limits. Socializing them is the work of politics. It’s about time we took it up again.”

Socializing kids and corporations... daunting tasks indeed. An interesting article. Worth a read.

Words: "even if there be no hell"

2006-11-04T12:48:00.000-06:00

I'm not finding much time for blogging these days, but I'm going to at least try to throw some quotes up here from time to time as I come across things. I'm sitting in my new favorite coffee house, listening to Radiohead and reading John Calvin [does life get any better?]. Despite the bad rap that Calvin gets due to many of those that like to use his name, he actually said some pretty good stuff. I'm reading through Book Three of the Institutes and came across this gem:

"For he who ponders within himself what God the Father is like toward us has cause enough, even if there be no hell, to dread offending him more gravely than any death" (III.ii.26).

Grant, Lord, that we your children would be so captivated by the thought of your great love for us - that love so profoundly displayed in your Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus - that we might indeed come to dread offending you. Lord, hear our prayer.

Invisible, part II

2006-09-11T19:12:00.000-05:00

Now that I know that at least a few people still look in on this blog occasionally, I sort of wish I had refrained from venting after my experience the other day. I fear that in recounting the story I made myself sound like I had somehow managed to do something heroic while those other pathetic souls just stood there and watched her burn. The truth is that I really didn't want to go across the street and had I been on that side to begin with I probably would just have run (I didn't mention the fact that she was in front of a gas station). The woman who got there ahead of me was really the hero because she never paused long enough to think about herself. She just acted in the interest of the other. She helped a burning woman while I just helped a woman who had been burned.

For the next couple of days I really wanted to go by the hospital to find out if she was oaky, maybe to find out her name and perhaps to tell her that me and a few of my friends had prayed for her. The hospital is only a couple of blocks from where I work. But I think, in the end, I was too afraid to get too close and to enter her suffering (which, I take it, goes far deeper than just the burns on her body). I've said on more than one occasion when teaching that we all want to help the poor, we just don't want to know them. I think I proved my own point on this occasion.

Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick, and all who have none to care for them. Help us to heal those who are broken in body or spirit, and to turn their sorrow into joy. Grant this, Father, for the love of your Son, who for our sake became poor, Jesus Christ our Lord. (Book of Common Prayer, 1979)

Invisible

2006-09-06T20:16:00.000-05:00

I know that this blog is pretty much dead, so no one may actually read this post. But I need to write it anyway. Therapy, I suppose.

I saw a human being on fire today. Literally.

I was sitting at a restaurant near the seminary waiting on my food when the lady behind the counter began to scream. “Oh my God! He’s on fire!” I turned and looked out the window to see a person (it turned out to be a woman) engulfed in flames across the street. Her entire upper body was ablaze. She fell to the ground and lay on her back waving her arms in the air. And several people standing nearby just stood and watched. They didn’t move toward her or attempt to help her. They just stood there and watched.

I ran outside and shouted for them to roll her over in the grass to help put out the flames (which no one did) and then ran back inside to try to get some water and to tell someone to call 911. The woman in the restaurant who first spotted her had already got some water and headed across the street. I got two more containers of water and ran behind her. When I arrived on her side of the street, the flames were out but her skin, hair and clothes were still smoldering. We poured some more of the water on her and then someone else from the restaurant brought some towels that we soaked and laid on her until the ambulance arrived. They loaded her up and left with sirens blaring. A small group of us who had stayed with her until they arrived just stood there in stunned disbelief.

She was a homeless woman, apparently inebriated to the point of numbness. None of us standing there know how it started. She was, for all intents and purposes, invisible to the world until she caught fire. Apparently she was still practically invisible to some who stood nearby.

They just stood there and watched.

Praying on the 4th of July

2006-07-04T14:44:00.000-05:00

Today I was driving past a church and noticed their sign that said: "Pray for those who keep us free." As I drove on, I followed their admonition (with my eyes opened, mind you). But I couldn't help but feel as though, despite the fact that such a recommendation was completely noble, there was still something profoundly inadequate about it for the church in

America

on this Independence Day. I love our country. I love its people. I love its history. I love its geography. And I love its best intentions (despite how far short of them we have fallen from the very beginning). But as a Christian I have an obligation, laid on me by the Lord himself, to love more than just those I count as "my own."

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt. 5:43-48)

In light of Christ's words from the Sermon on the Mount, I invite you to join me in praying these prayers from the Book of Common Prayer:

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Jesus, John Calvin and Val Kilmer

2006-04-16T17:33:00.000-05:00

John Calvin was adamantly opposed to any visual representations of Jesus. After seeing this I’m beginning to reconsider Calvin’s position.

Crunchy Cons

2006-03-11T09:09:00.000-06:00

I know that to bring up politics is to enter dangerous territory, but we're all friends, right?

I’m plugging a book that I haven't read, but that sounds very interesting. I heard a great commentary on NPR yesterday afternoon from a guy named Rod Dreher, a columnist and editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News and author of a new book called *Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun loving organic gardeners, evangelical free range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party). [Don’t you love books with good sub-titles?]

Dreher describes a fledgling movement of committed conservative thinkers who recognize that something is wrong with what has come to be known as conservatism in America. Crunchy Cons shop at Whole Foods, read Wendell Berry, and fear the forces of both “Big Business” AND “Big Government.” The review from Booklist suggests, “their most cherished hope is to overthrow the consumerist mentality that has made the Democrats the party of lust and the Republicans the party of greed.”

I went out and bought the book last night and read the first couple of chapters…. Good stuff!

To give you a bit more of the flavor of the book, here’s “The Crunchy-Con Manifesto,” which precedes chapter 1:

“1. We are conservatives who stand outside the contemporary conservative mainstream. We like it here; the view is better, for we can see things that matter more clearly.

2. We believe that modern conservatism has become too focused on material conditions, and insufficiently concerned about the character of society. The point of life is not to become a more satisfied shopper.

3. We affirm the superiority of the free market as an economic organizing principle, but we believe the economy must be made to serve humanity’s best interests, not the other way around. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

4. We believe that culture is more important than politics, and that neither America’s wealth nor our liberties will long survive a culture that no longer lives by what Russell Kirk identified as ‘the Permanent Things’–those eternal moral norms necessary to civilized life, and which are taught by all the world’s great wisdom traditions.

5. A conservatism that does not recognize the need for restraint, for limits, and for humility is neither helpful to individuals and society nor, ultimately, conservative. This is particularly true with respect to the natural world.

6. A good rule of thumb: Small and Local and Old and Particular are to be preferred over Big and Global and New and Abstract.

7. Appreciation of aesthetic quality – that is, beauty – is not a luxury, but key to the good life.

8. The cacophony of contemporary popular culture makes it hard to discern the call of truth and wisdom. There is no area in which practicing asceticism is more important.

9. We share Kirk’s conviction that ‘the best way to rear up a new generation of friends of the Permanent Things is to beget children, and read to them o’ evenings, and teach them what is worthy of praise: the wise parent is the conservator of ancient truths…. The institution most essential to conserve is the family.’

10. Politics and economics will not save us. If we are to be saved at all, it will be through living faithfully by the Permanent Things, preserving these ancient truths in the choices we make in everyday life. In this sense, to conserve is to create anew.”

It should be noted that while this is not a "Christian book" Dreher's political convictions are deeply informed by his Christian faith. He and his wife are devout Roman Catholics. I think that Dreher would still stand to my right on the political spectrum on a number of issues, but his brand of conservatism confirms my hope that we can dream up some better political options than the ones we have currently.

You can hear Dreher’s commentary and read an excerpt of the first chapter on the NPR website here.

You can check out the book on Amazon.com here.

At Least He Didn't Smile

2006-02-06T12:31:00.000-06:00

I've read a couple of different articles in which two of Bono's co-belligerents in the fight against global poverty - Thom York, lead singer of Radiohead and Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world's leading economists and the author of The End of Poverty - have criticized Bono for being too chummy with the likes of George Bush and Tony Blair, failing in their estimation to adequately speak truth to power. Perhaps there's some merit to their criticism, but Bono's statements before last week's National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C. certainly had more of a ring of the "prophetic" than most of the normally tame remarks made before such an amiable (superficial?) gathering. If you haven't read them already, you can find them here.

"Where Can I Flee from Your Presence"

2006-01-18T14:50:00.000-06:00

Life is crazy these days as I move nearer the completion of my doctoral dissertation, so I haven’t had much time to blog of late and I won’t have much time in the weeks and months to come. But I read a paragraph today that really struck me. I’ve spent 38 pages of one chapter of my dissertation trying to say what British theologian John Webster has said brilliantly in the following few sentences. When I read these words I literally had to put the book down and repent of the way I had been approaching the task that God has set before me. Perhaps they speak more to my peculiar situation, but I thought I’d share them anyway:

“One of the grand myths of modernity has been that the operations of reason are a sphere from which God’s presence can be banished, where the mind is, as it were, safe from divine intrusion. To that myth, Christian theology is a standing rebuke. As holy reason at work, Christian theology can never escape from the sober realization that we talk in the terrifying presence of the God from whom we cannot flee (Ps. 139.7). In Christian theology, the matter of our discourse is not someone absent, someone whom we have managed to exclude from our own intellectual self-presence and about whom we can talk away safely and undisturbed. We speak in God’s presence. When we begin to talk theologically about the holiness of God, we soon enough discover that the tables have been reversed; it is no longer we who summon God before our minds to make him a matter for clever discourse, but the opposite: the Holy God shows himself and summons us before him to give an account of our thinking. That summons – and not any constellation of cultural, intellectual or political conditions – is the determinative context for holy reason. There are other contexts, of course, other determinations and constraints in the intellectual work of theology…. But those determinations and constraints are all subordinate to, and relativized by, the governing claim of the holy God, a claim which is of all things most fearful but also of all things most of promise” (John Webster, Holiness, 15).

May we all be reminded today of the reality that all we do we do in the presence of a Holy Observer and may we seek to honor him in all that we undertake.

Glen Pillips, a Guitar and a Tape Recorder

2005-12-30T21:35:00.000-06:00

I know that at least a couple of the folks that check this blog occasionally dig Toad the Wet Sprocket as much as I do, so at least they’ll find this of interest. The rest of you should keep reading and check out some of the links… you might find something you like.

For about the last eight years we Toad fans have been trying to come to grips with the fact that our beloved band is no more. Thankfully their lead singer, Glen Phillips has continued to make music. His most recent album, Winter Pays for Summer, has some great tunes that come close to matching some of Toad’s best work.

Here’s the cool thing I’ve recently discovered. Glen is an artist who allows his live shows to be taped by fans and made legally available for free on the internet from a site called archive.org. As you might expect, the sound quality of these recordings is not always great, but this week I came across a performance from a solo acoustic show he played at a small venue in Washington, D. C., and the sound quality is pretty amazing. Glen played two sets, so there are 30 songs including some old Toad songs (like “Fly from Heaven,” “All I Want” and “Windmills”), some stuff off the new album (like “Gather” and “Don’t Need Anything”), and some nice covers (including a great cover of Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love”). There’s also some pretty cool unreleased material including a song about Jesus (“Warmth for the Many”) from an guy that I’ve heard identify himself as “one of those non-Christian fans of Jesus.”

Some of you who are of a conservative political persuasion or are offended by “colorful language” might find some things objectionable if you download the whole show. Others of you might find these same things endearing [yes, that means you Bill].

I Could Use Some Help!

2005-12-26T20:22:00.000-06:00

I’m asking my friends to pray for me for the next three weeks as I work on my dissertation. In order to be on track to graduate in May I have to have a complete rough draft of my dissertation ready by the middle of January. That’s not outside the realm of possibility, but at this point it is going to be quite a task. This week we’re in Texas where I’m house-sitting for some friends, which allows me to have a lot of quiet time and enables me to give the project my undivided attention. We’ll be heading back to the chilly Midwest next week and I’ll probably go into hiding again at the local Catholic seminary while my mom comes up to help with the kids. The next couple of months will probably be the most challenging and the most important months of my long academic journey. If you’re a praying person, your prayers for me would be greatly appreciated.

Blessed Art Thou Among... Jedi???

2005-12-20T23:13:00.000-06:00

My wife has written a couple of great posts on her blog about our adventures in trying to introduce some advent traditions into our home, including the way in which our not-quite-4 year old tried to get Anakin Skywalker into the barn in Bethlehem. The first post is here and the follow up is here.

She's also written a wonderful (though rather convicting) post about the lost art of practicing kindness.

Not only is she a great wife and mom but she's a pretty dang good blogger too!

Gleaning

2005-12-20T00:17:00.000-06:00

When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all your undertakings.
Deuteronomy 24:19

The Old Testament made it abundantly clear that the covenant community of God had a responsibility to provide for the poor and the vulnerable in their midst. One of the ways they were to ensure the welfare of those in need was through the practice described in Deuteronomy 24:19, a practice etched in our memories through the story of Ruth and Naomi. In the story these two women survive by the practice of gleaning – walking through the fields and gathering the grain that was left by the harvesters.

In the United States today some 35 million people – many of them elderly or children – have trouble finding enough food to sustain themselves. In the same United States we leave millions of pounds of perfectly good produce in the fields each year, not in an effort to provide for the poor but because of our use of modern harvesting equipment. I was surprised and thrilled several weeks ago when I heard a story on Chicago Public Radio and learned that the ancient practice of gleaning is still being practiced today. The story profiled a local man who coordinates church groups, boy scout groups, and others to go out into the fields and practice gleaning. They fill boxes with hundreds of pounds of produce left in the fields and donate their gleanings to local food shelters.

Though right now is not exactly the time to be out in the fields (especially here in Illinois!), I thought that this was such a wonderful idea that I had to pass it along. Check out the moving opening slide presentation from The Society of St. Andrew and consider how you, your family, and your church might be able to get involved.

Fives

2005-12-07T22:02:00.000-06:00

Several of us Table and Fire Junkies are passing the time that the forum is down by blogging about our "Fives Lists," which I originally saw on Will Samson's blog. Russ, Gigi, and Amber have already posted there lists. Here are mine:

Five Things to Do Before I Die

Spend two weeks with my wife, a good guidebook, and a rental car in Italy
Publish a book with a reputable publishing company
Learn to play chess
Hike the Grand Canyon with my kids
Own a cabin in the mountains where I can sit on the porch and read for hours on end

Five Things I Cannot Do

Dance
Sing harmony
Stay away from Table and Fire
Listen very long to Christian talk radio without my blood pressure going up
Survive another Midwest winter (it was 5 degrees here today)

Five People I Would Most Like to Hang Out With For a Day

Bob Dylan
Bono
Desmond Tutu
Fredrick Buechner
Jurgen Moltmann (one of the most important theologians of the latter half of the 20th century; converted in the German Amry when given a Bible while stuck in a British prison camp during WWII)

Five Most Influential (Non-Scriptural) Books on My Thinking

A Kierkegaard Anthology edited by Robert Bretall
Devotional Classics edited by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith
Ragamuffin Gospel & The Signature of Jesus by Brennan Manning (yes, that’s two, but they belong together; the first one is radical grace and the second one radical discipleship)
Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon
The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen (a powerful book; I read it in the hospital the week my dad died)

Five Things That Continue to Attract Me About My Wife

She is the least pretentious person I know and has a wonderful ability to make people feel at ease in her presence (myself, most of all)
She is a great conversation partner
She is incredibly thoughtful, both in the sense of being kind and considerate, and in the sense that she thinks carefully and deeply
She makes me laugh A LOT
She is far too beautiful for a guy like me, but she doesn’t mind being seen with me in public anyway (or at least she doesn’t let on if she does)

Five Movies That I Would Watch Over and Over Again

Henry V
Star Wars IV: A New Hope (the original!)
Rattle and Hum (contrary to what my wife says, it IS a movie!)
The Three Amigos (but only if my buddy Erlon is around)
In the Name of the Father

Five Things I Wish for My Children

That they would have well-formed imaginations and insatiable curiosities so as to ask meaningful questions in life
That they would love to read deeply and broadly so as to find meaningful answers in life
That they would make deep and lasting friendships that would sustain them through all of life’s challenges and bring them great joy
That they would make enough mistakes to learn important lessons but not so many or so great as to be plagued with scars or regret
That they would not be so attatched to this world that they would fail to give themselves away for God and other people

An Idea for All of Us Table and Fire Junkies

2005-12-06T12:52:00.000-06:00

Some of us who are (at least loosely) associated with Irving Bible Church are suffering through the long days of agonizing waiting, while we anticipate the return of our beloved Table & Fire Forum (perhaps a healthy advent exercise). I came across a blog entry that I thought could give us some fun things to talk about while we wait.

One of my favorite blogs that I’ve come across recently is called Willzhead from a guy named Will Samson. Will has an uncommon ability to be funny, cranky, and profound, often all in the same post. One of his recent entries was called “Fives List,” which included the following categories:

Five Things to Do Before I Die

Five Things I Cannot Do

Five People I Would Most Like to Hang Out With For a Day

Five Most Influential (Non-Scriptural) Books on My Thinking

Five Things That Continue to Attract Me About My Wife (or Husband)

Five Movies That I Would Watch Over and Over Again.

I’m working on my list and will try to post it in the next couple of days. In the meantime, check out Will’s list and start thinking about your own. You can post your list here or on your own blog if you have one.

Bono a Prophet?

2005-12-05T13:41:00.000-06:00

Okay, you’ll have to forgive me. The new U2 DVD has just come out and I’m a bit giddy. It was filmed at the United Center in Chicago back in May. We had tickets to the show, but ended up having to sell them to a friend so that we could make a trip back to Texas. Thankfully, we got tickets to the show on their second trip through Chicago back in September.

In one sense of the term, Bono has made a career out of being a prophet. One of the hallmarks of the biblical prophet was his insistence on speaking truth to power, even when that truth was not particularly flattering or popular. Bono has used his platform as one of the most popular musical performers in the world to speak out about injustices in his native Ireland, in the United States, in Latin America, and perhaps most famously in his advocacy on behalf of the continent of Africa. A recent New York Times article noted that “Bono's willingness to invest his fame, and to do so with a steady sense of purpose and a tolerance for detail… has made him the most politically effective figure in the recent history of popular culture.” In large measure, it’s the “prophetic voice” in U2’s music, performances, and off-stage political advocacy that has made them who they are and distinguished them from so many other bands that have come and gone over the course of their 25 year career.

But another sense of the term “prophet” – the more popular use of the term – refers to an ability to “see into the future.” Now I’m not sure that I’m ready to suggest that Bono has some divinely given gift of clairvoyance (those of us who aren't charismatics have all sorts of ways of explaining why this isn't happening much anymore), but I was struck when listening to “Where the Streets Have No Name” on the new DVD. In introducing the song Bono says “from the bridge at Selma on the Mississippi [site of the American “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, though not actually on the Mississippi], to the mouth of the River Nile, from the swamp lands of Louisiana, to the high peaks of Kilimanjaro, from Dr. King’s America to Nelson Mandela’s Africa, the journey for equality marches on.” Then when singing the song he changed the line about taking shelter from the “poison rain” to taking shelter from “the hurricane.” Now, the reference to the swamp lands of Louisiana and to taking shelter from the hurricane would not have been at all surprising had the concert been filmed after all that we witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but the film was shot three months before. I was struck by how the words he said then have even more meaning now. Hopefully the journey for equality will indeed continue to march on, both in the swamp lands of Louisiana and the heights of Kilimanjaro. Katrina made it clear that Dr. King's dream is still waiting to be fulfilled, not only in Africa but here in America too.

For all you other U2 geeks out there, there has been a spate of recent reflections from Christian writers on U2’s spiritual journey and message: Steve Stockman’s Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2, a collection of sermons reflecting on the intersection of Scripture and U2 songs called Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog, a more theological piece by Robert Vagocs called Religious Nuts, Political Fanatics: U2 in Theological Perspective, and a forthcoming book from Brazos Press (which means its bound to be good) called One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God. Also of interest is the recent ‘autobiography-of-sorts’ called Bono: in Conversation with Michka Assayas, a fascinating excerpt of which is available from ChristianityToday.com.

The Melancholy Dane

2005-11-11T11:21:00.000-06:00

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the death of the Danish Christian thinker Søren Kierkegaard. Few other writers have captured my heart or my mind more than this one. For the ten years that I have been reading, writing and thinking about “the melancholy Dane” he has consistently reminded me that authentic Christianity is not merely a matter of assent to a certain set of propositions or a matter of merely being a decent fellow but is instead a life of deep passion and a life of radical obedience. To be sure, I have often preferred doctrinal acquiescence and shallow moralisms, but Kierkegaard has kept me from ever feeling okay about that.

Kierkegaard saw himself as a sort of missionary whose task it was “to reintroduce Christianity to Christendom.” He lived in a country that touted itself as being a Christian nation, but Kierkegaard was convinced that in a nation where everyone thought themselves to be Christian, true Christianity did not exist. He writes: “We have what one might call a complete inventory of church buildings, bells, organs, pews, altars, pulpits, offering plates, and so on. But when Christianity does not exist, this inventory, so far from being an advantage, is a peril, because it is so very likely to give rise to the false impression that we must have Christianity, too…. Christ requires followers and defines precisely what he means by this. They are to be salt, willing to be sacrificed. But to be salt and to be sacrificed is not something that the thousands naturally go for, still less millions, or (still less!) countries, kingdoms, states, and (absolutely not!) the whole world. On the other hand, if it is a question of size, mediocrity, and lots of talk, then the possibility of the thing begins; then bring on the thousands, increase them to the millions – no, go forth and make the world Christian.

“The New Testament alone, not numbers, settles what Christianity is, leaving it to eternity to pass judgment on us. It is simply impossible to define faith on the basis of what people in general like best and prefer to call Christianity. As soon as we do this, Christianity is automatically done away with. There are, in the end, only two ways open to us: to honestly and honorably make admission of how far we are from the Christianity of the New Testament, or to perform skillful tricks to conceal the true situation, tricks to conjure up a forgery whereby Christianity is the prevailing religion in the land” (Provocations: The Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 178-180).

It seems to me that these words have not lost there sting, even 150 years later and on an altogether different continent. We, as evangelicals in America today, have much to learn from this nineteenth century Danish Lutheran. And on a much more personal level (as SK would insist we consider his words), I recognize that I still have much to learn about my own pursuit of Christ. Above my desk hangs the following quote that provides me much needed perspective on my work as a scholar and a disciple:

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I did that my whole life would be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?

“Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you?” (Provocations: The Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 201-202)

If you know much about Kierkegaard’s biography, you’ll know that it isn’t much of a stretch to say that Jesus ruined his life. And he wouldn’t have had it any other way. May we all learn a bit more what it means to find our lives by loosing them for the sake of our Master.

Three Year Old Eschatology

2005-11-09T11:17:00.000-06:00

I have learned a lesson in persistence in prayer from my three and a half year old. Nearly every night at bedtime for the past 10+ months since the tsunami, my son Will has either prayed or asked me to pray for “the people affected by the tsunami” (a phrase he got from me, but it has become his own). Since the time of Hurricane Katrina he’s expanded his prayer to include “the people affected by the tsunami and the hurricane.” If I’m winding down my part of the prayer and haven’t said it yet, he interrupts me to insist that I pray for them. I have to confess that I probably wouldn’t have thought much at all about the people affected by the tsunami in several months had it not been for Will’s insistence that we not neglect to lift them before the Lord.

As we were praying the other night he was feeling a little extra verbose, so he added to his normal prayer saying “And God, we pray that one day you will stop all these tsunamis and hurricanes.” Wow. It was a simple prayer from a child who really didn’t know what he was asking, but it struck me deeply, reminding me that the world we live in, the world in which I’m trying to raise my kids is “not the way its supposed to be” but that one day it will be. It reminded me that I have a certain obligation to teach my children both about our hope that things will one day be made right, and also to teach them to recognize that that day has not yet come. Things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be, and that obliges us to pray, and hope, and work.

In his book Educating for Life, Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff writes about Christian education, suggesting that part of teaching children to think and live Christianly in this world is to teach them to “lament the absence of shalom wherever we find it absent.” He writes: “Christian education must exhibit and teach for lament. The cry “This should not be,” so far from being smothered, as all too often it is, must be allowed, even encouraged. Why is that? For one thing, the struggle for the healing of broken and distorted relationships can be genuine only if it emerges from a heartfelt lament. But second, to teach our [children] to love the earth, to love God, to love culture, to love each other, to love oneself, is, as all of us know who have loved, to court the possibility, indeed, the certainty, of grief and sorrow” (Educating for Life: Reflections on Christian Teaching and Learning, 263).

As a father, it is a challenge to know how to appropriately teach a three and a half year old child how to lament, but in forcing me everyday to remember the thousands of people on the other side of the world whose lives are still in shambles, my three an a half year old has taught me how.

Yes, Lord. Will you one day stop all these tsunamis and hurricanes? Will you make all that is wrong with our world and all that is wrong with me right?

We Are the World

2005-11-03T17:41:00.000-06:00

Developing an overly critical disposition is, I suppose, an occupational hazard for one who spends his days studying theology. The line between critical and overly critical is a thin one, and one I’m certain I cross more often than I even realize (as I often also do with respect to the line between critical and insufficiently critical). But what I really fear is failing to include myself in my own criticisms, that is, being overly critical of others while being overly generous with myself. Jesus’ famous line about the log in you own eye and the speck in your neighbor’s makes it clear that precisely the opposite is supposed to be the case.

In this vein, I was struck today when reading the words of the seventeenth century French devotional writer François Fénelon. The book Meditations and Devotions is a collection of Fénelon’s prayers and homilies. Reflecting on 1 John 2:15, where we are told, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world” Fénelon writes:

“How wise these words are. The world is that heedless and corrupted multitude that Christ accuses in the Gospel. Everyone criticizes the world and yet each of us carries it in his heart, for the world is made up of those people who love themselves and who love others without relation to God. We are the world, for we love ourselves and seek in others what comes from God alone. Let us admit that we do not have the spirit of Christ. How shameful to say we renounce the world and yet to keep its values. Desire for power, love of prestige, self-indulgence, pursuit of pleasure, cowardice in Christian practices, neglect of the truths of the Gospel – here is the world. It lives in us; and we want to live in it, else why are we so desirous that it love us and so fearful lest it forget us?” (Meditations and Devotions, 18)

Wow. Need I say more?

Just Like Jesus Did?

2005-11-02T15:44:00.000-06:00

My good friend Chris McGregor has a link on his blog to an article from Tom Brokaw about contemporary evangelicalism (taken, if I’m not mistaken from a recent NBC special). In the article Brokaw interviews Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of a megachurch in suburban Colorado Springs. In the interview there is an interesting exchange between the two men:

Brokaw: Most of the churches that I know of, and certainly the ones I attended, at some point, you out loud acknowledge that you were a sinner or that you came face-to-face to guilt that you may feel.
Haggard: Right.
Brokaw: I didn’t see any of that here.
Haggard: Well, we do talk about sin. But, see, the issue is Jesus took care of our sin. And Jesus removes guilt from our life. So the emphasis in our church isn’t how to get your sins removed because that’s pretty easy to do. Jesus did that on the cross. The emphasis in our church is how to fulfill the destiny that God’s called you to.
Brokaw: You’re making it easier for them.
Haggard: Making it easier for them just like Jesus did, just like Moses did.

I know very little about Ted Haggard and am hesitant to be too critical of an isolated comment, but he said something here that captures much of my concern with contemporary, consumer-driven evangelicalism. It’s hard for me to read the New Testament or the history of the Church and see how Jesus made things “easy” for his would-be followers. Don’t get me wrong. I like “easy.” I’ve lived much of my life with “easy.” And obviously “easy” sells well in the suburbs. But deep down inside I’m afraid “easy.”

I was doing some research for my dissertation this morning, reading one of my favorite theologians, P. T. Forsyth. I came across a great passage written by this British theologian in 1912 about the Gnostics of the early centuries of the church, a passage referring to an ancient heresy that I fear has an all too familiar ring to it:

“They impressed people by a magnetism, a facility, and a confidence which the apostles, much humbled and scarcely saved, did not command. They offered a liberty very different from that wherewith Christ made apostles free. To their ardours, at their height, everything was lawful; and therefore sin was mostly a fiction. It could certainly be made too much of. They lowered and practically erased the fence between the Church and the age, and adjusted the Cross with so much ingenuity to the culture and comfort of the hour that it also was erased from their gospel.... And there were many who fell in with the ways of pagan society, only bringing to them a certain religious aspiration and refinement which even paganism could not command. Throughout it all the death of Christ was pushed into the corner, like an embarrassing episode of which the less said the better.... It tended to banish repentance from its experience, as spiritual culture always does when it claims to outgrow evangelical faith. The fear of God dropped to a crude and inferior stage of religion. The idea of discipline vanished from church life; and an extravagant idea of personal liberty, imported from the natural democracy, took the first place, vacated by the obedience of faith” (Faith, Freedom, and the Future, 23-24).

Jesus did say “my yoke is easy and my burden is light” but he also said “anyone who would come after me must take up his cross and follow me.” The former is much more easily marketable than the latter, but if you really want Jesus, you don’t get one without the other.

How Emergent Are You?

2005-10-28T21:44:00.000-05:00

A good conversation with a great old friend recently turned to the subject of the emergent conversation/movement/church/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. We didn't stay there long because we had too many other things to catch up on, but he told me one of these days I'd have bring him up to speed on what I think about the whole thing. If forced to sum up my thoughts on all things emergent I think I'd have to say I'm passionately ambivalent. I'm am at once strongly attracted to certain elements of the emergent ethos, yet, at the same time, remain somewhat skeptical and critical. A full explanation of both my sympathies and my critiques will have to wait for another day. I think I can say however, that more than anything, I fear that what is good about the conversation/movement may simply be co-opted by those church entrepreneurs looking for the latest gimmick.

The folks at Leadership Journal have recently started a blog of their own (haven't we all?) called "Out of Ur" ( http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/). Their most recent entry is "How Emergent Are You? McLaren's Seven Layers of the Emergent Conversation." It certainly isn't the most profound thing out there regarding "emergent stuff" but you might get a chuckle out of Layer One the way I did:

"Layer 1: Style
Seeker Community Church realizes they're ineffective at reaching the coveted 18-32 year old demographic. They send a few staff members to a conference and they come back with goatees and candles."

They forgot to mention the Persian rugs, but you get the point.

McLaren's 'Layer Seven' undoubtedly represents what I appreciate the most about the emergent ethos and is what I hope will last even if the trend we're now calling emergent doesn't.

"Layer 7: World
Maybe the mission of the church isn't simply to become a bigger church? Maybe, like Jesus, the church is to engage the larger world to reveal that the kingdom of God has drawn near? To their amazement, Seeker Community Church discovers significant swaths of the Bible (such as the Pentateuch, prophets, gospels, and epistles) talk about justice, poverty, and compassion. The church begins to speak about social issues and participates in efforts to combat poverty, AIDS, and global injustice."

It's nice to know that this is indeed about more than just facial hair, candles and Persian rugs.

On the Virtue of Keeping a Notebook

2005-10-19T21:52:00.000-05:00

One of my most prized possessions is a beat up old beige journal. I have at least a half-a-dozen others that are virtually indistinguishable from this one – random thoughts and quotes scratched down on about a third of the pages before it got tossed aside and forgotten about. But none of those other ones matter all that much. This one is different. Why? Because, despite the fact that the handwriting is eerily similar to my own, I didn’t write these random thoughts and quotes. I was an eleven year old kid when my dad was scratching down the contents of this notebook. The first entry is from 4:30 a.m. on November 22, 1983.

Most of you that read this (if there are any of you!) know that my dad died in the spring of 1999. It’s hard to believe that it has been that long. I still think about him and miss him all the time. That’s one of the reasons I love this notebook. It’s a little piece of him that I get to keep with me. And it’s a fascinating window into a complex soul (from one who wasn’t particularly well known for opening such windows).

The opening entry struck me again a couple of days ago when I picked up the journal for the first time in a long time. It is probably what inspired me to start most of the other journals I’ve never managed to stick with through the years, but, despite the fact that I rarely ever get much further into a notebook than my dad got into his, I think this entry is worth passing along here anyway. The words come out of another family treasure, the Bible that belonged to the patron saint of my mother’s side of the family, my great-grandmother Grace. Hers was a Bible and then some – one of those copies of the Good Book that had some other devotional and theological material included in the back. Somewhere in that section of added wisdom my dad, at 4:30 a.m. on 11/22/83, found and recorded these words about the virtue of keeping a notebook:

"If I were twenty-one again I would spend a little time every day in the realm of the beautiful. Luther always placed a flower on his desk before he began to write. His stormy nature needed the soothing influence of beauty’s touch. We all need it. A beautiful poem, a sweet song, a lovely picture, a rare literary gem, – the touch of the beautiful – once a day. The nearest practical approach to this for the average person is a well-ordered notebook, carefully conned and reviewed. Most great men have kept and carried a notebook. The things which we “note” are the things which stay with us….

“… Crowd your brain with gems. Fill your soul with the beauty of a thousand lovely thoughts… and do it while you’re young, when passing moments are yours – “while the evil days come not” – when the duties and responsibilities of life press so thick and hard that there does not seem to be a moment for soul culture or spiritual brooding.

“And this shall be the secret law of your heart in the collection and compilation of your literary “bric-a-brac” – whatever touches you – whatever appeals to you – whatever inspires you – whatever seems to you to be “lovely” – whatever sets your soul on fire – this must be treasured in your notebook."

Even (or perhaps especially!) in this age when we all have so many technological devices that promise to save us valuable time, I’m sure that most of us already feel like there’s not much time for soul culture or spiritual brooding, but that’s time we all yearn for and, I think, genuinely need. So go buy yourself a cheap blank book and start writing. Even if you only write in a third of it, the things you note will be the things that stay with you. And just maybe those things will stay with those who love you even when you’re gone.

Soul Searching

2005-10-03T18:32:00.000-05:00

Last week I received the latest edition of the Mars Hill Audio Journal in my mailbox. Every two months Mars Hill Audio puts together a thought-provoking collection of interviews with leading Christian thinkers (and non-Christians writing on religious themes) designed “to assist Christians who desire to move from thoughtless consumption of modern culture to a vantage point of thoughtful engagement” (from their website http://www.marshillaudio.org/). This volume was one of the best that I’ve heard (including a nice interview with Eugene Peterson, the full one hour version of which can be downloaded for free from their website).

The interview that struck me the most was with sociologist Christian Smith. Smith, along with Michael Emerson, is responsible for one of the most important discussions of the relationship between evangelicalism and the problem of race in America in their book Divided by Faith (Oxford, 2000). The interview on this edition of the Mars Hill Audio Journal focused on Smith’s newest book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (with Melinda Lundquist Denton, Oxford, 2005). What fascinated me about Smith’s comments in the interview was the fact that their research showed that the teenagers studied were very articulate but were, for the most part, completely ill-equipped to articulate the distinctives of their religious traditions. They knew very well the language of the culture, but hardly knew at all the language of the church (Smith illustrated this in the interview by talking about the fact that a word study of the interview transcripts revealed that a lot of young people used the word “grace” but the overwhelming majority of the uses of the word were in reference to Will and Grace). Smith said that what he found as he looked at the data was that while these teenagers were unable to describe the particulars of their respective religious traditions, they were nonetheless describing a coherent set of religious beliefs. Smith describes this set of beliefs with the apt phrase “moralistic therapeutic deism” – God exists, doesn’t want me to misbehave, wants me to be happy, gives me resources to cope with life and help me feel better about myself, but, for the most part, watches from a distance.

The key lesson learned from Smith’s research, it seems to me, is that American teenagers haven’t invented the religion of “moralistic therapeutic deism.” They have inherited it. They have inherited it from well meaning but misguided parents and (perhaps even more importantly) churches (more important because they nurture and form the religious life and language of both parents and children) who have far too often been shaped more by culture than by gospel. “Moralistic therapeutic deism” is marketable in a culture like ours, and many Americans, both young and old, have been catechized into its community. But it’s not the gospel. It doesn’t know words like depravity, redemption, communion, vocation – words without which the church cannot pass the gospel on to the next generation. I’m very much in favor of the church being able to speak the language of the culture, but I have long feared that in North America we’re losing the ability to speak our own language. Unfortunately, Smith and Denton have confirmed my fears.

The Truth We See

2005-09-27T18:27:00.000-05:00

British theologian P. T. Forsyth suggested around the turn of the 20th century that "the truth we see depends upon the men we are." Forsyth was writing in a time before it had become customary to use language that made it clear that women can see truth too (a shift in language I take to not only be "politically correct" but more importantly just plain correct for those of us who claim to be shaped by the Christian gospel), but despite all that it seems to me that he has captured something true and important. Our moral and spiritual formation affects our ability to apprehend truth. Our ongoing struggle with sin makes us ever "prone to wander" not only morally but intellectually as well. Forsyth's statement points out the essential connection between theology, spirituality, and ethics, capturing the truth underscored repeatedly in the epistle of First John: there is no knowledge of God (theology) without love of God (spirituality) and obedience to God (ethics). That's the central conviction that drives my work as a novice theologian. That's the main line of thinking I intend to pursue with this blog. Along the way I'm sure I'll throw in plenty of stuff about my wife and my kids, the books I'm buying and (less frequently) reading, the music I'm listening to, and the like. I've found that these things are a pretty essential part of my theological, spiritual, and ethical formation - the man I am and the truth I see - anyway. I hope this blog will be a way to help me think a little deeper about these issues, and, if anybody every reads this thing, I hope you'll help me think deeper about these issues too.