Here we go again. Time to get moving in the right direction again. I went to a new doctor yesterday and got weighed (far from my favorite experience). I found out what the fit of my belt had already told me, I'm not making progress in the right direction weight-wise. I know why: too busy to exercise, too much eating out for convenience sake, and my old enemy: portion size control.
I have been fighting this battle, often losing this battle, since I was nine years old. My new doctor said he had three words for me: "embrace lifestyle change."
Yep.
Got that doc.
I know all about it, I've been managing diabetes by diet for over three years. I learned to drop the sugar and count the carbohydrates. I'm all up in that.
But it's not working right now, because I have lost focus, my discipline slacked off.
I need to get back to counting and being more careful. I need to re-evaluate my relationship with food... again.
Change is hard.
It's no wonder that we humans seem so unable to really change in order to address our most basic troubles on a societal level. It's really difficult for me to control what I put in my pie hole on a long term basis. No wonder we still have poverty and crime and violence of all shapes and sizes.
Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who could just eat pretty much anything they wanted and stay thin, but I have never even known what that was like. My relationship with food has been out of whack for over three decades.
Sometimes I wish people would just treat each other better and care for the common good a little bit more than they do, but the world has never known what that was like. Our relationships with each other have been out of whack as long as anyone can remember.
Meaningful change means work.
Entropy is a thing.
Entropy means that the level of chaos in a system tends to increase without some investment of energy in to counteract it. Simply pouring energy into a system, is actually going to increase entropy in the long run, the energy that counteracts entropy must have some intention to it.
Take my kids rooms as an example. Every so often we spend some time cleaning up. Michele and I must provide the intention and continually refocus Jack and Cate or else they start playing instead of cleaning and the entropy (level of messiness) actually tends to increase. Eventually, by a combination of their physical action and the will of their parents, their rooms actually attain the look of orderliness.
But it doesn't last, as soon as they introduce other sorts of energy into the room, entropy begins to win the battle again, and intention must be applied in order to counter-act entropy.
This happens on the atomic, molecular, cellular, organismic, ecological, geological and cosmic levels. (Aside: organismic is a fun word to say)
In short, the dynamic relationship between chaos and order is built into the universe. It is active in the birth and death of stars and in the vacillations of my waistline, and we have been given agency to act within this framework.
That means I need to eat less and exercise more in order to be healthy.
It also means that we need to treat others with grace and compassion the way that Jesus told us if we ever want to change the world.
Somehow it always comes back to that doesn't it?
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
A Voice Crying Out
Among the many problems we face as a society is our infatuation with firearms. The phrase "latest mass killing," has become entirely too common. No, you don't need to remind me that one of the recent events was done with knives instead of guns, I get it, guns are not the cause of violence, but they escalate the damage that one person can do, and as such are something that ought to be treated with respect.
I own guns, I have since I was a teenager. I enjoy shooting, and I totally get the fascination that people have with them. I also get the rush of feeling powerful and self sufficient when you're armed.
But I'm not buying the arguments against gun control, because I think they need to be controlled. If they are in the hands of responsible citizens who have the inclination and wherewithal to use them properly, they are a tool. However, it is increasingly insane to say that we don't have a problem with the usage of this particular tool.
Chainsaws are dangerous, people get hurt using them with a fair amount of regularity. However, outside of certain horror movies and video games, they are rarely used as a weapon against other human beings, thus no one is really calling for stricter regulations on chainsaws.
Guns are misused with alarming regularity. Why? They are easily concealed, they are imminently lethal, and they are symbols of power. You may wonder what the last thing has to do with anything, but I think it is perhaps the most important facet of our complicated relationship with firearms.
There is very little evidence that possession of a firearm makes you any safer, in fact the presence of a gun in any given perilous situation often serves only to escalate the consequences rather than preventing an undesirable outcome. But armed people FEEL safer, and that's no small thing. Never mind that the average, untrained person will have very little success actually defending oneself via firearm, the placebo effect is powerful. It's the symbol of the gun that creates a certain mindset. In a stable person, it allows them to feel safe where perhaps they are not. In an unstable person it allows them to feel the power of death over life in way that draws out the darkest parts of their soul.
Beyond simple security from crime, the pro-gun argument wanders into the actual purpose of the second amendment: the formation of a "well organized militia." The argument being that we need guns to protect ourselves from our own government, and therefore we should not allow said government to regulate when and who can purchase firearms. I'm no conspiracy nut, so the idea that the government is coming for anything buy my money, doesn't really hold a lot of water. Our government can barely pass meaningful legislation, I sort of doubt that tanks will be rolling down Mainstreet anytime soon. Besides, if they do decide to start taking us out, it's going to be drones, you know, unmanned, flying death machines that can drop a bomb through your bathroom window before you even hear them, let alone see them... so good luck with your bunker full of AR-15's against that.
I apologize... I'm ranting. And I know that my ranting is not going to convince anyone in the NRA that they need to shut up and start taking their medication.
What I really want to talk about is Richard Martinez, the father of a 20 year old boy who was killed in the "latest mass killing." Mr. Martinez has come out in the past few days and given some powerful statements about this sort of madness. Unlike many of the parents who have lost their children in such a manner, he seems rather encouraged to enter into the fray, rather than backing away and grieving.
Perhaps he's what we need, a face and a voice, a lawyer, who knows the system and is powerfully motivated to work for change. He's hopping mad right now, it remains to be seen whether that passion ever translates into action. He has the look of someone who might be able to make a real dent in our nonsense. But then again, I though the same thing about Gabby Giffords, I thought the same thing after Newtown, I thought, "Finally, were going to wake up and realize that we have been seduced by the dark symbol of guns."
But we don't, we haven't yet, and I wonder if we're ever going to.
It's hard to feel hopeful when the most sane things being said are coming from a grieving father, who is so incredibly angry that he cannot restrain his bile. It's hard to feel hopeful that we're ever going to break the demonic hold of such a symbol of power and violence, we are apparently still willing to sacrifice our children to it, rather than take reasonable measures to restrain it.
The idea of doing something to curb gun violence is so very wrought with emotion on both sides, And there is a lot of shouting going on, and a lot of illogical, if not downright insane, dogma being tossed around. And I'm not going to say that we can't be trusted with guns, because most of us can. The problem is that the few who cannot, are extremely dangerous with a gun in their hand. It is therefore incumbent on those who would defend the "right to bear arms" to be responsible in their exercise of that right.
That right, in fact, no right really gets to trump the right of another human being to live. After all, what good are liberty and the pursuit of happiness if you're not alive?
It is the nature of rights to come with responsibility, but too often we want the rights without the responsibility. Dead children are telling us there's something wrong, and there really aren't too many arguments you can make with dead children. We need to get on fixing the problem, and if we're not reasonable AND responsible, it's just not going to get fixed.
I own guns, I have since I was a teenager. I enjoy shooting, and I totally get the fascination that people have with them. I also get the rush of feeling powerful and self sufficient when you're armed.
But I'm not buying the arguments against gun control, because I think they need to be controlled. If they are in the hands of responsible citizens who have the inclination and wherewithal to use them properly, they are a tool. However, it is increasingly insane to say that we don't have a problem with the usage of this particular tool.
Chainsaws are dangerous, people get hurt using them with a fair amount of regularity. However, outside of certain horror movies and video games, they are rarely used as a weapon against other human beings, thus no one is really calling for stricter regulations on chainsaws.
Guns are misused with alarming regularity. Why? They are easily concealed, they are imminently lethal, and they are symbols of power. You may wonder what the last thing has to do with anything, but I think it is perhaps the most important facet of our complicated relationship with firearms.
There is very little evidence that possession of a firearm makes you any safer, in fact the presence of a gun in any given perilous situation often serves only to escalate the consequences rather than preventing an undesirable outcome. But armed people FEEL safer, and that's no small thing. Never mind that the average, untrained person will have very little success actually defending oneself via firearm, the placebo effect is powerful. It's the symbol of the gun that creates a certain mindset. In a stable person, it allows them to feel safe where perhaps they are not. In an unstable person it allows them to feel the power of death over life in way that draws out the darkest parts of their soul.
Beyond simple security from crime, the pro-gun argument wanders into the actual purpose of the second amendment: the formation of a "well organized militia." The argument being that we need guns to protect ourselves from our own government, and therefore we should not allow said government to regulate when and who can purchase firearms. I'm no conspiracy nut, so the idea that the government is coming for anything buy my money, doesn't really hold a lot of water. Our government can barely pass meaningful legislation, I sort of doubt that tanks will be rolling down Mainstreet anytime soon. Besides, if they do decide to start taking us out, it's going to be drones, you know, unmanned, flying death machines that can drop a bomb through your bathroom window before you even hear them, let alone see them... so good luck with your bunker full of AR-15's against that.
I apologize... I'm ranting. And I know that my ranting is not going to convince anyone in the NRA that they need to shut up and start taking their medication.
What I really want to talk about is Richard Martinez, the father of a 20 year old boy who was killed in the "latest mass killing." Mr. Martinez has come out in the past few days and given some powerful statements about this sort of madness. Unlike many of the parents who have lost their children in such a manner, he seems rather encouraged to enter into the fray, rather than backing away and grieving.
Perhaps he's what we need, a face and a voice, a lawyer, who knows the system and is powerfully motivated to work for change. He's hopping mad right now, it remains to be seen whether that passion ever translates into action. He has the look of someone who might be able to make a real dent in our nonsense. But then again, I though the same thing about Gabby Giffords, I thought the same thing after Newtown, I thought, "Finally, were going to wake up and realize that we have been seduced by the dark symbol of guns."
But we don't, we haven't yet, and I wonder if we're ever going to.
It's hard to feel hopeful when the most sane things being said are coming from a grieving father, who is so incredibly angry that he cannot restrain his bile. It's hard to feel hopeful that we're ever going to break the demonic hold of such a symbol of power and violence, we are apparently still willing to sacrifice our children to it, rather than take reasonable measures to restrain it.
The idea of doing something to curb gun violence is so very wrought with emotion on both sides, And there is a lot of shouting going on, and a lot of illogical, if not downright insane, dogma being tossed around. And I'm not going to say that we can't be trusted with guns, because most of us can. The problem is that the few who cannot, are extremely dangerous with a gun in their hand. It is therefore incumbent on those who would defend the "right to bear arms" to be responsible in their exercise of that right.
That right, in fact, no right really gets to trump the right of another human being to live. After all, what good are liberty and the pursuit of happiness if you're not alive?
It is the nature of rights to come with responsibility, but too often we want the rights without the responsibility. Dead children are telling us there's something wrong, and there really aren't too many arguments you can make with dead children. We need to get on fixing the problem, and if we're not reasonable AND responsible, it's just not going to get fixed.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Honor and Memory
I spent yesterday making good use of my freedom. I played in the backyard, I went out and indulged in some free market capitalism, and I went home for a nap on my back porch. It was Memorial Day in these United States of America, and I read quite a few things as I lounged around, about how we should honor the memory of those who died in the various conflicts that our nation has gotten itself into over the years.
I have done enough funerals for veterans to be familiar with the pathos of soldiering. If you listen to the little poems that are read as prayers of a sort by VFW details at the funeral of their "fallen comrade," you will understand that there is a complicated, in some ways beautiful, thought process that goes into honoring a life that included service to one's country. The flag folding, the playing of Taps and the presentation of that flag with empty rifle cartridges inside to the surviving family is touching and solemn.
I have been around enough veterans in enough different circumstances to understand that really honoring them is a more complicated process. So here's my after Memorial Day thoughts.
When I worked as a chaplain at the VA hospital in Pittsburgh during seminary, I was assigned to several psychiatric wards, and there I met men (and a few women) who had been involved in the peculiar event that we call war. Some had been wounded in combat, others had gotten away unscathed at least physically. It was here that I first really learned about Post Traumatic Stress. It was here that I met people who had spent thirty years trying to deal with things that happened to them when they were 19 or 20. I met people who were broken, damaged and otherwise lost in battle. But they still had to navigate the rather difficult task of living. Some could do it, with a few breakdowns here and there, others had no way of coping with the actual world. There were so many different experiences, and so many different ways of breaking, but one thing was common enough that it stuck: they had almost no idea why they had to fight in the first place.
This brought me to an awareness of something, most of these soldiers had been poor and marginally educated. Most of them had either been drafted or enlisted because they had to. Most of them, even after thirty years, still couldn't give a good reason why we needed to be in Vietnam (because of timing most of them were Vietnam Vets). I had grown up learning that it was to stop communism, and that seemed like a good idea to me at the time, but I understood that, from the perspective of a soldier, ideology is a pretty stupid reason to fight. If I was going to be in that kind of peril, I think I might want to know that I am protecting more than just an idea. Wars are fought for some really abstract reasons, and that make life hard for those who fight them.
It was a little shocking to me at the time, to hear these people still trying to figure out why they had been sent to war, I'm not talking about basket cases either, I'm talking about intelligent, and thoughtful people, who would otherwise be very productive members of society, if it hadn't been for the trauma they experienced and the trouble they were now having finding the meaning in it.
If they had died, they would not have raised these questions. It's easy to honor those who have made the "ultimate sacrifice," it's harder to deal with people who lived to tell you how pointless the whole thing really was. And they did, almost to a person, at least the ones who were willing to talk about it. Many won't, it's only the ones who can bring themselves to face the horror again that are willing to tell you. I'm not even going to dishonor their courage by listing any of the more grievous examples that I heard that summer.
All I want to say is that they changed the way I feel about patriotism and they changed the way I feel about honoring soldiers. I have come to believe that the best way to honor those who serve our nation, is to stop sending them to die in futile and often sinister conflicts that are started by politicians and corporations.
While I am deeply thankful to those that serve, my gratitude leads me to desire that their service be truly honorable, which entails righteousness in the mission and purposes they are asked to pursue. No amount of battlefield valor can make unjust violence a source of glory.
Movies and fiction sometimes present us with the myth of the gung-ho soldier, who longs for glory and action. I have known some of those characters, they were people who had not been to war yet. Most of the people who have experienced the reality had a more circumspect attitude about it. That was another surprise that I got in the VA: the humility, and the soul searching that comes from being put in a place where you are asked to kill and have others who are trying to kill you. This may only take place after the noise has died down, and when it does the battle can be truly fierce. So this day after Memorial Day I would like to honor the true soldiers: people who realize that their personal honor is the only thing that separates them from murderers and mercenaries, and people who are willing to put that honor to the ultimate test when bullets are flying and things are exploding.
If only the ones who start the wars had the same sensibility.
I have done enough funerals for veterans to be familiar with the pathos of soldiering. If you listen to the little poems that are read as prayers of a sort by VFW details at the funeral of their "fallen comrade," you will understand that there is a complicated, in some ways beautiful, thought process that goes into honoring a life that included service to one's country. The flag folding, the playing of Taps and the presentation of that flag with empty rifle cartridges inside to the surviving family is touching and solemn.
I have been around enough veterans in enough different circumstances to understand that really honoring them is a more complicated process. So here's my after Memorial Day thoughts.
When I worked as a chaplain at the VA hospital in Pittsburgh during seminary, I was assigned to several psychiatric wards, and there I met men (and a few women) who had been involved in the peculiar event that we call war. Some had been wounded in combat, others had gotten away unscathed at least physically. It was here that I first really learned about Post Traumatic Stress. It was here that I met people who had spent thirty years trying to deal with things that happened to them when they were 19 or 20. I met people who were broken, damaged and otherwise lost in battle. But they still had to navigate the rather difficult task of living. Some could do it, with a few breakdowns here and there, others had no way of coping with the actual world. There were so many different experiences, and so many different ways of breaking, but one thing was common enough that it stuck: they had almost no idea why they had to fight in the first place.
This brought me to an awareness of something, most of these soldiers had been poor and marginally educated. Most of them had either been drafted or enlisted because they had to. Most of them, even after thirty years, still couldn't give a good reason why we needed to be in Vietnam (because of timing most of them were Vietnam Vets). I had grown up learning that it was to stop communism, and that seemed like a good idea to me at the time, but I understood that, from the perspective of a soldier, ideology is a pretty stupid reason to fight. If I was going to be in that kind of peril, I think I might want to know that I am protecting more than just an idea. Wars are fought for some really abstract reasons, and that make life hard for those who fight them.
It was a little shocking to me at the time, to hear these people still trying to figure out why they had been sent to war, I'm not talking about basket cases either, I'm talking about intelligent, and thoughtful people, who would otherwise be very productive members of society, if it hadn't been for the trauma they experienced and the trouble they were now having finding the meaning in it.
If they had died, they would not have raised these questions. It's easy to honor those who have made the "ultimate sacrifice," it's harder to deal with people who lived to tell you how pointless the whole thing really was. And they did, almost to a person, at least the ones who were willing to talk about it. Many won't, it's only the ones who can bring themselves to face the horror again that are willing to tell you. I'm not even going to dishonor their courage by listing any of the more grievous examples that I heard that summer.
All I want to say is that they changed the way I feel about patriotism and they changed the way I feel about honoring soldiers. I have come to believe that the best way to honor those who serve our nation, is to stop sending them to die in futile and often sinister conflicts that are started by politicians and corporations.
While I am deeply thankful to those that serve, my gratitude leads me to desire that their service be truly honorable, which entails righteousness in the mission and purposes they are asked to pursue. No amount of battlefield valor can make unjust violence a source of glory.
Movies and fiction sometimes present us with the myth of the gung-ho soldier, who longs for glory and action. I have known some of those characters, they were people who had not been to war yet. Most of the people who have experienced the reality had a more circumspect attitude about it. That was another surprise that I got in the VA: the humility, and the soul searching that comes from being put in a place where you are asked to kill and have others who are trying to kill you. This may only take place after the noise has died down, and when it does the battle can be truly fierce. So this day after Memorial Day I would like to honor the true soldiers: people who realize that their personal honor is the only thing that separates them from murderers and mercenaries, and people who are willing to put that honor to the ultimate test when bullets are flying and things are exploding.
If only the ones who start the wars had the same sensibility.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Survivor
I have been watching Survivor for way too long. It is really about the only network television show I have really paid much attention to since Lost ended. The show was born during an actor's guild strike, and was quickly followed by many other "reality" television shows, until you wondered if TV was ever going to go back to telling fictional stories. Reality TV is cheap to make compared to shows that use actual actors, and you can simply tweak and recycle themes nearly endlessly and things stay somewhat interesting because there are endless combinations of weird people you can throw together on a tropical island.
The premise of the show strikes a primal chord in people, but what keeps me coming back after over a decade, is the questions that this particular show raises: moral questions, social questions, ultimately spiritual questions.
Last night was the finale of the latest season, and the choice was between Tony, a police officer from Jersey who was the epitome of a win at any cost "scrambler," and Woo, a taekwondo instructor who basically rode an alliance with Tony into the final two, where the jury (made up of players who have been voted off), must decide who "deserves" to win the million dollar prize.
In the course of the 39 days that Survivor contestants spend playing the game, it is necessary to lie, cheat and betray trust in order to stay in the game. Except this year, Woo managed to stay in the game largely without doing that. He looked for all intents and purposes as though he was simply a malleable stooge that Tony was using, until the very end, when he started talking about the principles by which he had been playing: honor, respect, etc. which were/are part of his taekwondo philosophy. I thought for a moment that Woo had a chance, because I realized he had done something really remarkable: he had gotten to the end of the game by being honorable and a good sport, rather than by being a liar and a snake in the grass. He had reached the final vote without ever wielding power, or being a bully. He had even, given the choice between facing the jury with Tony or Cass, a player who was for various reasons profoundly disliked and who had no more claim to controling her own destiny than Woo, chose Tony, who had obviously been in control, and been the most strategic player in the game.
He chose Tony because he considered Tony to be the more worthy opponent, and because he wanted to finish his game without breaking his code of honor.
And Tony won.
And Woo got nothing, but he walked away with his honor in tact, which actually is something.
Going into the final episode, I had judged Woo, he was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, he was young and naive, he was a little too happy go lucky for Survivor. His choice vis-a-vis Tony seemed to back up that judgment, until he said why, and then I thought, "Crap! He deserves to win! But he's not going to."
He couldn't win because the game of Survivor has invented morality all it's own. It's been on long enough that fans of the show, who end up being contestants on the show, have come to appreciate treachery and "making moves" more than being a good, honorable person. You can't be too much of a villain (Russell Hantz), but you also can't be a choirboy and have people think you're actually a good player. You have to have some blood on your hands, but not too much.
It ends up being an interesting social commentary. The players notice it from the beginning now. They often say, at some point, "I'm not like this, but this is the game, and this is what you have to do." There have been people who won the game by being likeable, and there have been those who won by sheer, undeniable shrewdness. But the culture of the game has morphed in recent years to give bias to the "win at any cost" mindset.
So much so that a person who plays based on a code of honor and principles seems utterly doomed, even if he actually has a 50-50 shot.
Then again, it's just a TV show, right?
The premise of the show strikes a primal chord in people, but what keeps me coming back after over a decade, is the questions that this particular show raises: moral questions, social questions, ultimately spiritual questions.
Last night was the finale of the latest season, and the choice was between Tony, a police officer from Jersey who was the epitome of a win at any cost "scrambler," and Woo, a taekwondo instructor who basically rode an alliance with Tony into the final two, where the jury (made up of players who have been voted off), must decide who "deserves" to win the million dollar prize.
In the course of the 39 days that Survivor contestants spend playing the game, it is necessary to lie, cheat and betray trust in order to stay in the game. Except this year, Woo managed to stay in the game largely without doing that. He looked for all intents and purposes as though he was simply a malleable stooge that Tony was using, until the very end, when he started talking about the principles by which he had been playing: honor, respect, etc. which were/are part of his taekwondo philosophy. I thought for a moment that Woo had a chance, because I realized he had done something really remarkable: he had gotten to the end of the game by being honorable and a good sport, rather than by being a liar and a snake in the grass. He had reached the final vote without ever wielding power, or being a bully. He had even, given the choice between facing the jury with Tony or Cass, a player who was for various reasons profoundly disliked and who had no more claim to controling her own destiny than Woo, chose Tony, who had obviously been in control, and been the most strategic player in the game.
He chose Tony because he considered Tony to be the more worthy opponent, and because he wanted to finish his game without breaking his code of honor.
And Tony won.
And Woo got nothing, but he walked away with his honor in tact, which actually is something.
Going into the final episode, I had judged Woo, he was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, he was young and naive, he was a little too happy go lucky for Survivor. His choice vis-a-vis Tony seemed to back up that judgment, until he said why, and then I thought, "Crap! He deserves to win! But he's not going to."
He couldn't win because the game of Survivor has invented morality all it's own. It's been on long enough that fans of the show, who end up being contestants on the show, have come to appreciate treachery and "making moves" more than being a good, honorable person. You can't be too much of a villain (Russell Hantz), but you also can't be a choirboy and have people think you're actually a good player. You have to have some blood on your hands, but not too much.
It ends up being an interesting social commentary. The players notice it from the beginning now. They often say, at some point, "I'm not like this, but this is the game, and this is what you have to do." There have been people who won the game by being likeable, and there have been those who won by sheer, undeniable shrewdness. But the culture of the game has morphed in recent years to give bias to the "win at any cost" mindset.
So much so that a person who plays based on a code of honor and principles seems utterly doomed, even if he actually has a 50-50 shot.
Then again, it's just a TV show, right?
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Journalists, Prophets and Preachers... Failure, Absence and Being Tuned Out
Journalism is printing what someone does not want printed.
Everything else is public relations.
-George Orwell
The press gets a lot of flack these days. I think they deserve some criticism, but not the kind of criticism they generally receive. With a very few exceptions, the press has become a mouthpiece for extremists. You have Fox News on one end of the spectrum claiming to be fair and balanced, which unless they're being deliberately ironic is just a patent lie, if they are being ironic, it's hilarious, except for the fact that the American public is the butt of the joke. On the other hand you have the "liberal" media, which is, to be fair a monstrosity in it's own right. The "enlightened" and educated folks who are largely the foil for Fox's brand of conservativism, have been around for a long time, and they have held the reigns of our cultural context, and they have led us onto the brink of a precipice.
I suspect that the failure of liberalism as our dominant cultural metaphor is entirely responsible for the rise of the sort of bombastic fear mongering that one finds on Fox. Most of the rhetoric that one is bathed in over the whole 24 hour news cycle is textbook reactionary material: we need to fear the outsiders and the agents of change, because they're a threat to our way of life.
In almost any period of human history this is a good formula for popular success: make people aware that the world is out get them, because in some cases it is, thus there is significant evidence to support your claims. People naturally fear change and outsiders because we do not like to lose what we have. Reactionary talk first convinces people that they are in the category of people who belong, who have carved out their niche in the world, who have worked for what they have and then it subtly (or not so subtly) works to convince them that someone is trying to take it away from them, tapping in to our basic fear of loss, which is rooted in our anxiety over our own mortality.
Liberalism failed when it became the status quo, when the politics that brought us labor unions and the New Deal, became the way things were and they began to suffer the same lesions and infections that corrupted our democratic republic in the gilded age. We discovered that no one is immune to the corrupting nature of power and wealth.
Journalists, and preachers alike started to neglect their prophetic duty: the call to speak a word of challenge to the powers of the age. Perhaps it's because money has always been able to purchase influence, but I think it goes deeper than that, into the depth of human nature. We always want to keep what we have. A young journalist might have the verve to dig up the truth behind and underneath all the mess, but they do not yet have the trust of the public. Once one becomes a trusted source (think Tom Brokaw, or Walter Cronkite), one must become more circumspect about one's words, and the question is no longer: "is it true?" The question starts to be laden with other considerations.
Jesus said, "whoever seeks to save his life will lose it." (Mt. 16: 25) Which is a rather challenging idea, which has broad implications, far beyond the obvious implications concerning martyrdom. It means that when you hold on to what you have, you lose something very important. I would claim that journalists and preachers alike have neglected their prophetic purpose in favor of career stability. Prophets are not popular characters for the most part, if you want to be beloved, you probably shouldn't make too much of habit of telling people what they don't want to hear.
If you're popular, you're probably not a prophet. There are a lot of pretenders out there; a lot of people who imitate the stern, sometimes bombastic style of prophetic speech, but they're really just telling people things that reinforce what they already believed. There is no challenge, no gauntlet thrown down, no call to repent. False prophets have no trouble accumulating a following, there are people out there who will flock to their teaching. Genuine prophets usually find themselves alone under the broom tree, with the powers of the world seeking their life.
I have been thinking about a quote I saw on the interweb last week, but cannot re-trace: "Preach like you're trying to get fired." And no, I don't think that means deliberately trying to offend people and being obnoxious, I do think it means exercising the prophetic role of the office. I think it means presenting the challenge that Jesus makes to the way things are and always have been. I think it might make some people angry, but if it doesn't, isn't it all just public relations?
Monday, May 19, 2014
Give Me an Excuse...
I went over to Bethany Beach DE this weekend for a retreat with a group of guys from the church. When I'm away from home and my own bed I mysteriously become a morning person. When you are only a block and half away from the Atlantic ocean, and you find yourself wide awake at 5:00 AM, get your butt up and go to the beach, because sunrise is about to happen, and you really don't want to miss it.
I arrived on the beach in the gray dawn light, and I was not alone. There were a few people setting up to fish, and one man with a backpack full of really expensive camera gear, and of course joggers... there are always joggers, reminding the rest of us that we are lazy and out of shape, and that we pretty much lack all discipline because they can get up absurdly early and run, or stay out precariously late and run... but I digress.
The thing that struck me though was that I was the only person on the beach who was just there to watch the sunrise. I had no ulterior motives, no special gear and no big plans. I was just there to watch and maybe snap a couple pics with my phone, just to solicit some oohs and ahhs from my instagram peeps. But my primary reason for being on the beach was simply to witness a quiet, peaceful moment and see something beautiful. Shouldn't that be enough of a reason?
It actually strikes me quite often, when I'm out walking around in various nature-like places. We humans seem to love to have some excuse to be there. I'm guilty of this, I often use the excuse: "it's just good to be out here enjoying nature," to justify wasting several hours fishing, when I don't catch anything. (When I do catch things, I don't need that excuse.) But I'm getting this creeping awareness that I shouldn't need a bunch reasons or any expensive paraphernalia to just go outside for a while. My (our) need for this stems from a woeful lack of internal resources.
This desire, perhaps we could even call it a compulsion, to make excuses, extends beyond the realm of outdoor activities. We're all familiar with the people who make excuses not to do things, in various settings. The thing is most of these excuses are just thinly veiled versions of "because I don't want to."
It's not okay to say no to a meeting or something like that, just because. But maybe it should be.
Busy-ness is attractive to most of us, because it makes us feel like we're getting somewhere and we're being really useful engines (Thomas the Tank Engine stories use that phrase quite a bit for those of you who have never spent any time around male toddlers). It also gives us a fool-proof dodge when it comes to the rather dangerous and uncomfortable work of self-care and spiritual formation.
My profession is one of the few where you are likely to run into people who will bow out of things because they need some down time. They call it all sorts of spiritual sounding stuff: sabbath time, meditation, retreat, and such, but what it amounts to is simply "me time." Now, I'm endorsing that as an idea, but I admit, people who make the excuses can sound downright obnoxious, and I'll also admit that they probably need the excuses, due to the fact that it's not okay in our world, to just say, "no" without giving an excuse.
I'll admit, I would have felt out of place just standing there on the beach in the early dawn, I needed to do something, so I walked, I got some exercise, I made my time productive, and I still got to watch the sunrise.
As did the fisherman, and the photographer and the joggers; but our excuses kept us from actually sharing the everyday miracle of a sunrise with one another.
That's when it dawned on me: our excuses are really things that keep us out of community with one another.
As an introvert, it would have been fairly unimaginable to walk on to a beach with a few other strangers and share our thoughts about the new day, but by virtue of having very little in the way of a visible excuse, I was opening myself up to that possibility, luckily for me everyone else had their thing, and so I got my "me time." Their busy-ness gave me the excuse not to "interrupt" even with a basic salutation. They were obviously otherwise engaged, and that allowed me to remain in my personal space.
However, I think we have a problem: losing our ability to form spontaneous communities in the real world. Thus we need support groups and all manner of social media to fill a void. The void that has been created by our excuses.
We're too busy, we're not finding value in something or other, things are just not to our liking. It is becoming nearly impossible to break through the web of excuses, unless you can scare, anger or otherwise manipulate people enough to wriggle through. Historically the gathering of the community of the church happened at morning, noon and evening for the offices of the day, it gave people the "excuse" they needed to come into the presence of God. That's not the way things really work these days (a few communities still do it, but even then it's rarely widely attended), all we have left is Sunday morning, and we're losing our grip on that.
The excuses are winning.
And the sun still comes up every day.
I arrived on the beach in the gray dawn light, and I was not alone. There were a few people setting up to fish, and one man with a backpack full of really expensive camera gear, and of course joggers... there are always joggers, reminding the rest of us that we are lazy and out of shape, and that we pretty much lack all discipline because they can get up absurdly early and run, or stay out precariously late and run... but I digress.
The thing that struck me though was that I was the only person on the beach who was just there to watch the sunrise. I had no ulterior motives, no special gear and no big plans. I was just there to watch and maybe snap a couple pics with my phone, just to solicit some oohs and ahhs from my instagram peeps. But my primary reason for being on the beach was simply to witness a quiet, peaceful moment and see something beautiful. Shouldn't that be enough of a reason?
It actually strikes me quite often, when I'm out walking around in various nature-like places. We humans seem to love to have some excuse to be there. I'm guilty of this, I often use the excuse: "it's just good to be out here enjoying nature," to justify wasting several hours fishing, when I don't catch anything. (When I do catch things, I don't need that excuse.) But I'm getting this creeping awareness that I shouldn't need a bunch reasons or any expensive paraphernalia to just go outside for a while. My (our) need for this stems from a woeful lack of internal resources.
This desire, perhaps we could even call it a compulsion, to make excuses, extends beyond the realm of outdoor activities. We're all familiar with the people who make excuses not to do things, in various settings. The thing is most of these excuses are just thinly veiled versions of "because I don't want to."
It's not okay to say no to a meeting or something like that, just because. But maybe it should be.
Busy-ness is attractive to most of us, because it makes us feel like we're getting somewhere and we're being really useful engines (Thomas the Tank Engine stories use that phrase quite a bit for those of you who have never spent any time around male toddlers). It also gives us a fool-proof dodge when it comes to the rather dangerous and uncomfortable work of self-care and spiritual formation.
My profession is one of the few where you are likely to run into people who will bow out of things because they need some down time. They call it all sorts of spiritual sounding stuff: sabbath time, meditation, retreat, and such, but what it amounts to is simply "me time." Now, I'm endorsing that as an idea, but I admit, people who make the excuses can sound downright obnoxious, and I'll also admit that they probably need the excuses, due to the fact that it's not okay in our world, to just say, "no" without giving an excuse.
I'll admit, I would have felt out of place just standing there on the beach in the early dawn, I needed to do something, so I walked, I got some exercise, I made my time productive, and I still got to watch the sunrise.
As did the fisherman, and the photographer and the joggers; but our excuses kept us from actually sharing the everyday miracle of a sunrise with one another.
That's when it dawned on me: our excuses are really things that keep us out of community with one another.
As an introvert, it would have been fairly unimaginable to walk on to a beach with a few other strangers and share our thoughts about the new day, but by virtue of having very little in the way of a visible excuse, I was opening myself up to that possibility, luckily for me everyone else had their thing, and so I got my "me time." Their busy-ness gave me the excuse not to "interrupt" even with a basic salutation. They were obviously otherwise engaged, and that allowed me to remain in my personal space.
However, I think we have a problem: losing our ability to form spontaneous communities in the real world. Thus we need support groups and all manner of social media to fill a void. The void that has been created by our excuses.
We're too busy, we're not finding value in something or other, things are just not to our liking. It is becoming nearly impossible to break through the web of excuses, unless you can scare, anger or otherwise manipulate people enough to wriggle through. Historically the gathering of the community of the church happened at morning, noon and evening for the offices of the day, it gave people the "excuse" they needed to come into the presence of God. That's not the way things really work these days (a few communities still do it, but even then it's rarely widely attended), all we have left is Sunday morning, and we're losing our grip on that.
The excuses are winning.
And the sun still comes up every day.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Say Jesus
The shoes do not fit.
Despite everything that God had done with his chosen people, despite calling them out of obscurity, despite consistently elevating the most unlikely candidates: younger brothers, foreign women, slaves, even prostitutes, into being important characters in his story. The people had still crafted this vision for themselves of a God who is the picture of might and power, who is surely working towards some victorious future, where the people of God are elevated into their rightful place as rulers of the world.
Except it never happened.
Babylon happened. Rome happened, but never the vision of Zion that is seemingly promised by the God of Abraham. Some would say this means that God was false in his promises. I think it's just a matter of poor interpretation and no small amount of wishful thinking.
Jesus spent his life battling this wishful thinking. His most powerful enemies were people who firmly believed that if they just followed the rules well enough, God would finally come through on the promise.
And so they missed the very embodiment of the promise.
Because God was doing something that they never expected, even though they should have.
When he came he did not inaugurate the Kingdom of Heaven in the way that everyone expected. Instead, he showed God's absolute dedication to this covenant that calls the least, the sick, the broken, the sinful, the poor and the outcast into new way. If you believe in the incarnation, and you look at the life of Jesus as a full and faithful expression of God's love for the world, you must see that God is willing to die for his principles.
The goal from the beginning has been to create a universe that is founded on love. Creation is an act of love, not of necessity. When we use our creative powers to fulfill a need, it is called invention. God did not invent the universe, God created the universe, actually it appears he may have created a lot of them. Why? There is so much emptiness and wasted potential in the vastness of space. The parts of it that we have studied to some extent are large enough to boggle our minds, and we learn, as we explore that there is more and more to learn about. On an enormous scale that we can really only know through mathematics and imagination, we are really alone. This is not to say that there are not other sentient beings out there, but there is an awful lot of wasted space too.
And so the question arises: is a God who can do all that, really terribly interested in ruling the world?
In Jesus we find the answer to that question is no. He's not interested in that at all, Caesar, or whoever wants it, can have it. What he's interested in is a relationship with a couple dozen people, and the web of relationships that can stretch out from those couple dozen people through thousands of years and through the rise and fall of empires.
God wants to be sovereign in our hearts, and in our lives, he wants us to follow him. God wants disciples not vassal lords. The language of worldly power is a distraction and a mistake for those who would seek to follow Jesus. If for no other reason than the fact that Jesus himself so strenuously avoided those who would make him king. Beyond that, there is also everything else in the Bible, which points to a God who is not so much interested in our allegiance, as in our love.
It stands to reason that if God desired the sort of absolute obedience that humans often demand in the Name, Creation would have been ordered somewhat differently. If God really wanted to be king of this little drop of rock and water floating through a vast universe that was all God's doing in the first place, then there wouldn't be much we could do to prevent it, Even eating a really special apple could not prevent God's sovereignty, unless of course, for some reason, God decided to let us go on doing things that ran contrary or across his plans.
If one puts any stock in the idea of a Creator, further, if one subscribes to the notion that the Hebrew Bible aptly describes that God, then Jesus of Nazareth is not a surprising twist in the plot, but the absolutely predictable revelation of the God who loves enough to forbear, forgive and redeem.
That we sometimes understand and proclaim him as though he is the ultimate deus ex machina, or even perhaps some formulation of magical trickery is a testament to our peculiar and persistent way of misapprehending God's motives.
It's no secret that our ideas about God or gods often put us at odds with each other. In the course of our history religious folk, including Christians, have not exactly been the light of the world. You can trace these episodes of violence directly to these misapprehensions of God, to moments when we though that God's will was for us, whoever "we" happened to be at the moment, to employ violence in his name in order to usher in some sort of promised land scenario.
But violence never wins. It may be necessary at times and it may produce momentary results, but in the wide angle of history violence only ever produces a moment of peace, and power is notoriously difficult to wield with justice and so it never lasts very long. Joshua led the people into the promised land on a wave of "God sanctioned" violence, but the Canaanites and their gods didn't simply melt away, eventually they led to the corruption and idolatry that destroyed the unity of the twelve tribes. David and Saul fought a bitter war for control of the kingdom, but eventually the sins of the people caught up with them and Babylon destroyed them... then Rome... then... well the list kind of goes on and on.
God is there through it all... weeping for Jerusalem and waiting for the day when his wayward children will allow themselves to be gathered under his protective wings. This has become a story about much more than just the sons of Abraham, Jerusalem is a symbol of what we all should be waiting and working for. A city where God rules our hearts, with justice and mercy and most importantly steadfast love. It has nothing to do with a geopolitical scheme: not Israel (the place), or Rome, or the United States of America, when will we stop making the same mistakes over and over again?
Despite everything that God had done with his chosen people, despite calling them out of obscurity, despite consistently elevating the most unlikely candidates: younger brothers, foreign women, slaves, even prostitutes, into being important characters in his story. The people had still crafted this vision for themselves of a God who is the picture of might and power, who is surely working towards some victorious future, where the people of God are elevated into their rightful place as rulers of the world.
Except it never happened.
Babylon happened. Rome happened, but never the vision of Zion that is seemingly promised by the God of Abraham. Some would say this means that God was false in his promises. I think it's just a matter of poor interpretation and no small amount of wishful thinking.
Jesus spent his life battling this wishful thinking. His most powerful enemies were people who firmly believed that if they just followed the rules well enough, God would finally come through on the promise.
And so they missed the very embodiment of the promise.
Because God was doing something that they never expected, even though they should have.
When he came he did not inaugurate the Kingdom of Heaven in the way that everyone expected. Instead, he showed God's absolute dedication to this covenant that calls the least, the sick, the broken, the sinful, the poor and the outcast into new way. If you believe in the incarnation, and you look at the life of Jesus as a full and faithful expression of God's love for the world, you must see that God is willing to die for his principles.
The goal from the beginning has been to create a universe that is founded on love. Creation is an act of love, not of necessity. When we use our creative powers to fulfill a need, it is called invention. God did not invent the universe, God created the universe, actually it appears he may have created a lot of them. Why? There is so much emptiness and wasted potential in the vastness of space. The parts of it that we have studied to some extent are large enough to boggle our minds, and we learn, as we explore that there is more and more to learn about. On an enormous scale that we can really only know through mathematics and imagination, we are really alone. This is not to say that there are not other sentient beings out there, but there is an awful lot of wasted space too.
And so the question arises: is a God who can do all that, really terribly interested in ruling the world?
In Jesus we find the answer to that question is no. He's not interested in that at all, Caesar, or whoever wants it, can have it. What he's interested in is a relationship with a couple dozen people, and the web of relationships that can stretch out from those couple dozen people through thousands of years and through the rise and fall of empires.
God wants to be sovereign in our hearts, and in our lives, he wants us to follow him. God wants disciples not vassal lords. The language of worldly power is a distraction and a mistake for those who would seek to follow Jesus. If for no other reason than the fact that Jesus himself so strenuously avoided those who would make him king. Beyond that, there is also everything else in the Bible, which points to a God who is not so much interested in our allegiance, as in our love.
It stands to reason that if God desired the sort of absolute obedience that humans often demand in the Name, Creation would have been ordered somewhat differently. If God really wanted to be king of this little drop of rock and water floating through a vast universe that was all God's doing in the first place, then there wouldn't be much we could do to prevent it, Even eating a really special apple could not prevent God's sovereignty, unless of course, for some reason, God decided to let us go on doing things that ran contrary or across his plans.
If one puts any stock in the idea of a Creator, further, if one subscribes to the notion that the Hebrew Bible aptly describes that God, then Jesus of Nazareth is not a surprising twist in the plot, but the absolutely predictable revelation of the God who loves enough to forbear, forgive and redeem.
That we sometimes understand and proclaim him as though he is the ultimate deus ex machina, or even perhaps some formulation of magical trickery is a testament to our peculiar and persistent way of misapprehending God's motives.
It's no secret that our ideas about God or gods often put us at odds with each other. In the course of our history religious folk, including Christians, have not exactly been the light of the world. You can trace these episodes of violence directly to these misapprehensions of God, to moments when we though that God's will was for us, whoever "we" happened to be at the moment, to employ violence in his name in order to usher in some sort of promised land scenario.
But violence never wins. It may be necessary at times and it may produce momentary results, but in the wide angle of history violence only ever produces a moment of peace, and power is notoriously difficult to wield with justice and so it never lasts very long. Joshua led the people into the promised land on a wave of "God sanctioned" violence, but the Canaanites and their gods didn't simply melt away, eventually they led to the corruption and idolatry that destroyed the unity of the twelve tribes. David and Saul fought a bitter war for control of the kingdom, but eventually the sins of the people caught up with them and Babylon destroyed them... then Rome... then... well the list kind of goes on and on.
God is there through it all... weeping for Jerusalem and waiting for the day when his wayward children will allow themselves to be gathered under his protective wings. This has become a story about much more than just the sons of Abraham, Jerusalem is a symbol of what we all should be waiting and working for. A city where God rules our hearts, with justice and mercy and most importantly steadfast love. It has nothing to do with a geopolitical scheme: not Israel (the place), or Rome, or the United States of America, when will we stop making the same mistakes over and over again?
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Say Lord
Faith is not a rational proposition. The nature of faith is to believe something that cannot be proven. However, once one starts from a foundation of faith, having made that one leap, it is rather important that one build with consistency and rationality in mind. In the ideal situation, one recognizes the leap and then seeks to move forward. This is where I think people of faith have an advantage: in recognizing that they have made some assumptions about very important matters.
The other fork in the road: holding only to objectively verifiable truth, is constantly stymied by the limits of knowledge and perpetually challenged when those boundaries are crossed. It is actually, I think, transference of those frustrations onto people of faith that creates a certain sense of superiority in those who have "cast off the superstitions."
It is always a surprise, but never a shock when I discover that God was bigger, more beautiful or more complicated than I had previously expected. As the Scriptures move from the realm of aboriginal tales explaining the nature of things (creation, fall, Cain and Abel, Babel, Noah and the flood), and into a more concrete history, we are introduced to Abram, son of Terah, whom God calls to strike out on his own to a new land. In the course of the journey Abram is given a new name: Abraham. God gives him the name, God gives him a promise, a covenant actually, and God gives him a son: Isaac, through whom is born Jacob, who will be given the name Israel (which is not entirely complimentary).
For a long time, the Creator is known by his association with this family: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel.
This is a dramatic increase in specificity. When God speaks to Moses at the burning bush, this is the identity that is used, and new bit of information is given, the actual Name of God: YHWH, which was sacred and unspeakable to the Hebrew people, but which is founded on the Hebrew verb "to be," which is why when Moses asks Gods name, God says, "I AM."
Not speaking the actual name became quite a thing: they marked the tetragrammaton with the vowels of the word adonai, which means Lord. So, as you read through English translations of the Bible you are likely to see LORD with unusual capitalization, that's because the actual word used there is too holy to speak.
The title of Lord is not really popular in modern talk, but for much of history it was a common thing to call anyone in a position of honor: Lord, or my Lord. So the Hebrew Scriptures go the extra mile: they say "the Lord, your God," quite often, and prophets are beholden to use the formula: "Thus says the Lord," or "I am the Lord your God," to distinguish when and what God is saying to his people.
There are three major world faiths that all identify the God that Abraham called Lord, as the one true God. Christianity and Islam have dwarfed Judaism, but the genetic descendants of Abraham are still hanging around, and are still important players on the stage of history, even if their numbers are relatively small.
In taking on the title of The LORD, the Creator has gotten intimately involved in a very messy story. The name has been used as a weapon, and the common core belief in the One True God, has done very little to hold people of faith together.
This is one of the big reasons why so many vague pantheist systems can mount such a challenge to the big three: because it's easier and neater to believe that God or gods are just kind of "out there" in the universe, benevolently detached, just waiting for us poor creatures to reach out and "phone home."
It takes more faith to look at the twisted, violent, blasphemous, and terribly specific story and find a God with an identity.
When you get specific and use the Name of the LORD, you are invoking a very particular relationship, and very particular Being. It is a statement of trust that that Lord is good and that the universe is founded on something other than random violence: that something is love, and love is where the story really gets interesting.
The other fork in the road: holding only to objectively verifiable truth, is constantly stymied by the limits of knowledge and perpetually challenged when those boundaries are crossed. It is actually, I think, transference of those frustrations onto people of faith that creates a certain sense of superiority in those who have "cast off the superstitions."
It is always a surprise, but never a shock when I discover that God was bigger, more beautiful or more complicated than I had previously expected. As the Scriptures move from the realm of aboriginal tales explaining the nature of things (creation, fall, Cain and Abel, Babel, Noah and the flood), and into a more concrete history, we are introduced to Abram, son of Terah, whom God calls to strike out on his own to a new land. In the course of the journey Abram is given a new name: Abraham. God gives him the name, God gives him a promise, a covenant actually, and God gives him a son: Isaac, through whom is born Jacob, who will be given the name Israel (which is not entirely complimentary).
For a long time, the Creator is known by his association with this family: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel.
This is a dramatic increase in specificity. When God speaks to Moses at the burning bush, this is the identity that is used, and new bit of information is given, the actual Name of God: YHWH, which was sacred and unspeakable to the Hebrew people, but which is founded on the Hebrew verb "to be," which is why when Moses asks Gods name, God says, "I AM."
Not speaking the actual name became quite a thing: they marked the tetragrammaton with the vowels of the word adonai, which means Lord. So, as you read through English translations of the Bible you are likely to see LORD with unusual capitalization, that's because the actual word used there is too holy to speak.
The title of Lord is not really popular in modern talk, but for much of history it was a common thing to call anyone in a position of honor: Lord, or my Lord. So the Hebrew Scriptures go the extra mile: they say "the Lord, your God," quite often, and prophets are beholden to use the formula: "Thus says the Lord," or "I am the Lord your God," to distinguish when and what God is saying to his people.
There are three major world faiths that all identify the God that Abraham called Lord, as the one true God. Christianity and Islam have dwarfed Judaism, but the genetic descendants of Abraham are still hanging around, and are still important players on the stage of history, even if their numbers are relatively small.
In taking on the title of The LORD, the Creator has gotten intimately involved in a very messy story. The name has been used as a weapon, and the common core belief in the One True God, has done very little to hold people of faith together.
This is one of the big reasons why so many vague pantheist systems can mount such a challenge to the big three: because it's easier and neater to believe that God or gods are just kind of "out there" in the universe, benevolently detached, just waiting for us poor creatures to reach out and "phone home."
It takes more faith to look at the twisted, violent, blasphemous, and terribly specific story and find a God with an identity.
When you get specific and use the Name of the LORD, you are invoking a very particular relationship, and very particular Being. It is a statement of trust that that Lord is good and that the universe is founded on something other than random violence: that something is love, and love is where the story really gets interesting.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Say Anything
When I first started studying theology, I found it really difficult to say anything. My hesitance was born out of a very new and raw awareness of how much I didn't know. I heard Middlers and Seniors use words like "sotierology," which spell checker doesn't even like, but which means one's opinion about salvation. I didn't yet know what a hermeneutic or that everybody has one for better or worse (a perspective regarding the interpretation of scripture).
I feared at any moment my utter ignorance of Hegelian dialectic or Kantian ethics would be shamefully displayed by some naive comment I made. And so I did very little talking, and spent a good amount of time looking things up, and eventually I learned to take my place in the conversation. It was not an easy or very comfortable process, but it was necessary for a Seminary student.
Every now and then I try to get back in touch with that unknowing, to do as Yoda instructs Luke Skywalker and, "unlearn what I have learned," in order to gain new understanding. That is a valuable exercise in humility and perspective, and often produces fruit of one sort or another.
However, there comes a point where this sort of deconstruction of one's assumptions becomes toxic. Deconstruction is one of the distinguishing features of postmodern thinking; tearing apart the edifices of culture and the moral and logical assumptions we thought we had in the bank.
Deconstruction is particularly hostile to theological investigation because when you strip away the assumptions that we make in faith, you ultimately have nothing. Deconstruction often leads to atheism, because God is intentionally a mystery, an unknowable reality at the core of everything that exists.
The value in being at that place, of having all of your assumptions on the cutting room floor, is debatable, but it's a place that I think students of theology and also students of human nature, need to come to.
We confront the void, the nothing, the big empty.
This is the set of conditions that exist in the beginning of the book of Genesis, and then something happens, even before God says, "Let there be light." The Spirit, Breath, Wind of God is present in the void. You can't prove or disprove this, there are no witnesses and there is no evidence, because, as of yet there was still nothing except the Spirit, Breath, Wind. From our perspective, you either assign to that Spirit, a consciousness, or you don't, but you can't get around the reality of that condition, there is something there.
If you name that something God, there are many things you can begin to build on that assumption.
If you name it nothing, or deny the reality of it's existence, you have reached an intellectual dead end, and you lose all ability to say anything, because anything you do say will be a product of your own imagination.
Some would say our construction of God or gods is precisely that, an act of imagination, and I agree to this extent: we do tend to create God in our own image. In any age you can see how the God or gods that a people worship is influenced by their specific, cultural and societal values. Which is sometimes taken as proof that there is actually no ultimate reality, no ground of being behind all this.
However, if you choose to make the opposite assumption, namely that God is the ground of all being, look at where this assumption leads us: creation is purposeful and as such contains underlying moral assumptions about good and bad, inasmuch as "good" advances the cause of the Creator, and "bad" tears down or destroys the cause.
This is not to say that atheism equals immorality, because it certainly does not. But we should be honest that many of the motivating forces that create moral atheists, are in fact constructions made by a culture that evolved with the assumption of a Creator. Atheists then look at the construction of a purposeful deity and say, "we can follow the code, without actually believing in the programmer," and they can, and they do, and more power to them.
Whatever Calvinism I have left in me, tells me that I would probably not be a very good person if I didn't believe in God. Maybe I would, but there's a good chance that I would be even more selfish than I already am. I would probably not find many occasions even for the basic altruism of giving a hoot about anyone or anything that did not immediately effect me.
When I stand and face the void, I am not okay with there truly being nothing. When I name it as something, even if that something is a tremendous mystery, I am better. When I trust that the mystery is somehow a loving God, I am better still, and when I trust that, in Jesus Christ, the mystery calls me it's child, then I can say something.
I feared at any moment my utter ignorance of Hegelian dialectic or Kantian ethics would be shamefully displayed by some naive comment I made. And so I did very little talking, and spent a good amount of time looking things up, and eventually I learned to take my place in the conversation. It was not an easy or very comfortable process, but it was necessary for a Seminary student.
Every now and then I try to get back in touch with that unknowing, to do as Yoda instructs Luke Skywalker and, "unlearn what I have learned," in order to gain new understanding. That is a valuable exercise in humility and perspective, and often produces fruit of one sort or another.
However, there comes a point where this sort of deconstruction of one's assumptions becomes toxic. Deconstruction is one of the distinguishing features of postmodern thinking; tearing apart the edifices of culture and the moral and logical assumptions we thought we had in the bank.
Deconstruction is particularly hostile to theological investigation because when you strip away the assumptions that we make in faith, you ultimately have nothing. Deconstruction often leads to atheism, because God is intentionally a mystery, an unknowable reality at the core of everything that exists.
The value in being at that place, of having all of your assumptions on the cutting room floor, is debatable, but it's a place that I think students of theology and also students of human nature, need to come to.
We confront the void, the nothing, the big empty.
This is the set of conditions that exist in the beginning of the book of Genesis, and then something happens, even before God says, "Let there be light." The Spirit, Breath, Wind of God is present in the void. You can't prove or disprove this, there are no witnesses and there is no evidence, because, as of yet there was still nothing except the Spirit, Breath, Wind. From our perspective, you either assign to that Spirit, a consciousness, or you don't, but you can't get around the reality of that condition, there is something there.
If you name that something God, there are many things you can begin to build on that assumption.
If you name it nothing, or deny the reality of it's existence, you have reached an intellectual dead end, and you lose all ability to say anything, because anything you do say will be a product of your own imagination.
Some would say our construction of God or gods is precisely that, an act of imagination, and I agree to this extent: we do tend to create God in our own image. In any age you can see how the God or gods that a people worship is influenced by their specific, cultural and societal values. Which is sometimes taken as proof that there is actually no ultimate reality, no ground of being behind all this.
However, if you choose to make the opposite assumption, namely that God is the ground of all being, look at where this assumption leads us: creation is purposeful and as such contains underlying moral assumptions about good and bad, inasmuch as "good" advances the cause of the Creator, and "bad" tears down or destroys the cause.
This is not to say that atheism equals immorality, because it certainly does not. But we should be honest that many of the motivating forces that create moral atheists, are in fact constructions made by a culture that evolved with the assumption of a Creator. Atheists then look at the construction of a purposeful deity and say, "we can follow the code, without actually believing in the programmer," and they can, and they do, and more power to them.
Whatever Calvinism I have left in me, tells me that I would probably not be a very good person if I didn't believe in God. Maybe I would, but there's a good chance that I would be even more selfish than I already am. I would probably not find many occasions even for the basic altruism of giving a hoot about anyone or anything that did not immediately effect me.
When I stand and face the void, I am not okay with there truly being nothing. When I name it as something, even if that something is a tremendous mystery, I am better. When I trust that the mystery is somehow a loving God, I am better still, and when I trust that, in Jesus Christ, the mystery calls me it's child, then I can say something.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Mothers
Michele informed me this morning that I should write something about Mother's Day. I asked her what exactly she had in mind, immediately feeling somewhat inadequate for the task (probably a latent function of having a Y chromosome). She told me about a conversation that she had been having with some of the women at work about the "other side" of Mother's Day. Being one that has an inherent resistance to holidays that are largely an invention of the shadowy guild alliance between florists, jewelers and greeting card companies, that sounded like a good idea... here goes.
Kevin Durant brought everyone to tears while accepting his award as the NBA's Most Valuable Player. He spoke through some tears of his own about how his mother had been the "real MVP." He talked about her sacrifice and the really tough road that she walked, raising two boys on the edge of poverty, keeping them safe, fed and off the streets. It was a moment that, I suspect, everyone who is struggling through whatever trials child-rearing entails dreams about. Here she is, watching her son who is on top of the world, immensely wealthy and recognized as one of the very best of the best, which would make any parent's heart swell with joy. Then he takes it over the top and tells her that he recognizes that he wouldn't be where he was without her, she is appreciated, publicly, to a standing ovation of highly successful NBA players, executives and celebrities.
That is the dream. And it would seem that she deserves that minute in the sun, most mothers do, and I do not argue the value of taking a minute to recognize them. The challenge that has been given me by the mother of my children is to take a minute to consider the flip side of the coin. What about the women who either cannot have children or the ones who feel no desire to do so? What about the women who have complicated and/or destructive relationships with their own mothers, or their daughters? What about the people who live with the reality of having been abandoned by their mothers?
These questions led me into a broader consideration of our valuation of women as members of our society. Since the birth of my daughter eight years ago, I have been surprised to find myself being drawn to some rather feminist ideas. I have begun to look at women's issues very differently as I watch my daughter grow into one. I am thankful that we live in a time and a place in the world where she will not be treated as property or a pawn in some economic or political arrangement. I am glad that she will have the right to vote and pursue almost any goal or dream that she might have. But I already see the sinister limits that our world is already silently wrapping around her. She already worries if she's pretty and if she's popular and if the right boy notices her. She already thinks of her life in terms of growing up and having children, even though she's not even sure how that happens.
Don't get me wrong, if she grows up to be a mother, I will be happy for her, and I will love me some grandkids all up, but I don't want her to ever feel like that is necessary for her to be complete. She already, I suspect, feels that her value is somehow attached to what boys (and other girls) think of her. I don't see the same weight on my son, it's not that he doesn't care at all, it just doesn't hang on him as heavily.
This is where the feminist critique of our culture begins to seem more valuable to me than it did before. I grew up with respect for my mother, I suppose I inherently valued her as a person, because of this, I sort of figured that the world treated women, more or less, with equality, because that's what I saw from my Dad and in the confines of our family. Even as I began to see how things weren't always equitable, I figured it was okay, maybe women weren't exactly equal to men, but they were a heck of a lot better off than they used to be. Until I had a daughter...
I know, I know, it took something that personally affected me to teach me to value women as inherently valuable human beings, shame on me for not being more sensitive and enlightened sooner. Cut me some slack... it's that Y chromosome again... I get it now.
I want my daughter to be celebrated, whether she is a mother or not. I want the world to know that her value is not at all hinged to her ability or desire to procreate, she is more than the transportation mechanism for a uterus. I want her to grow into a woman who does not need a man to validate her existence.
Mothers are worth celebrating, but that is not the only identity that gives you value.
Life is complicated, and I have seen women who bore children and yet failed to be Mothers. I have also seen those who could not or did not have children be the very paradigm of motherhood to many and varied "children."
Let's take a minute to remember the women who grieve for the children they will never have, and perhaps the ones they have lost. Let's take a minute to remember people who cannot, in good conscience, celebrate the woman who gave birth to them. Let Hallmark handle the sappy sentimentality.
I want my celebration of Mother's Day to include some element that might change the world that my daughter is going to live in. So I'm thankful to my wife for challenging me to write this all out. Thinking it through will make me a better father.
Happy Mother's Day Michele.
Kevin Durant brought everyone to tears while accepting his award as the NBA's Most Valuable Player. He spoke through some tears of his own about how his mother had been the "real MVP." He talked about her sacrifice and the really tough road that she walked, raising two boys on the edge of poverty, keeping them safe, fed and off the streets. It was a moment that, I suspect, everyone who is struggling through whatever trials child-rearing entails dreams about. Here she is, watching her son who is on top of the world, immensely wealthy and recognized as one of the very best of the best, which would make any parent's heart swell with joy. Then he takes it over the top and tells her that he recognizes that he wouldn't be where he was without her, she is appreciated, publicly, to a standing ovation of highly successful NBA players, executives and celebrities.
That is the dream. And it would seem that she deserves that minute in the sun, most mothers do, and I do not argue the value of taking a minute to recognize them. The challenge that has been given me by the mother of my children is to take a minute to consider the flip side of the coin. What about the women who either cannot have children or the ones who feel no desire to do so? What about the women who have complicated and/or destructive relationships with their own mothers, or their daughters? What about the people who live with the reality of having been abandoned by their mothers?
These questions led me into a broader consideration of our valuation of women as members of our society. Since the birth of my daughter eight years ago, I have been surprised to find myself being drawn to some rather feminist ideas. I have begun to look at women's issues very differently as I watch my daughter grow into one. I am thankful that we live in a time and a place in the world where she will not be treated as property or a pawn in some economic or political arrangement. I am glad that she will have the right to vote and pursue almost any goal or dream that she might have. But I already see the sinister limits that our world is already silently wrapping around her. She already worries if she's pretty and if she's popular and if the right boy notices her. She already thinks of her life in terms of growing up and having children, even though she's not even sure how that happens.
Don't get me wrong, if she grows up to be a mother, I will be happy for her, and I will love me some grandkids all up, but I don't want her to ever feel like that is necessary for her to be complete. She already, I suspect, feels that her value is somehow attached to what boys (and other girls) think of her. I don't see the same weight on my son, it's not that he doesn't care at all, it just doesn't hang on him as heavily.
This is where the feminist critique of our culture begins to seem more valuable to me than it did before. I grew up with respect for my mother, I suppose I inherently valued her as a person, because of this, I sort of figured that the world treated women, more or less, with equality, because that's what I saw from my Dad and in the confines of our family. Even as I began to see how things weren't always equitable, I figured it was okay, maybe women weren't exactly equal to men, but they were a heck of a lot better off than they used to be. Until I had a daughter...
I know, I know, it took something that personally affected me to teach me to value women as inherently valuable human beings, shame on me for not being more sensitive and enlightened sooner. Cut me some slack... it's that Y chromosome again... I get it now.
I want my daughter to be celebrated, whether she is a mother or not. I want the world to know that her value is not at all hinged to her ability or desire to procreate, she is more than the transportation mechanism for a uterus. I want her to grow into a woman who does not need a man to validate her existence.
Mothers are worth celebrating, but that is not the only identity that gives you value.
Life is complicated, and I have seen women who bore children and yet failed to be Mothers. I have also seen those who could not or did not have children be the very paradigm of motherhood to many and varied "children."
Let's take a minute to remember the women who grieve for the children they will never have, and perhaps the ones they have lost. Let's take a minute to remember people who cannot, in good conscience, celebrate the woman who gave birth to them. Let Hallmark handle the sappy sentimentality.
I want my celebration of Mother's Day to include some element that might change the world that my daughter is going to live in. So I'm thankful to my wife for challenging me to write this all out. Thinking it through will make me a better father.
Happy Mother's Day Michele.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
A Kick in the Smugness
The world has come a long way since the days when people could be simply abducted from their homes and sold into slavery...
Oh, wait... no it hasn't. The abduction of 234 Nigerian girls is a stark reminder of that fact, it has inspired lots of impotent internet outrage, and an equally impotent visit from John Kerry. I am praying that every one of those girls gets home, but I know that even if they do, they are just a drop in the bucket of the global human trafficking problem. There are millions of people who are victims of various sorts of human trafficking operations, there are men, women and children, and it's not just something that happens in Africa or Asia, it is rampant in the United States and Europe as well.
Despite the scope of the problem, which is probably actually even worse than some of the alarming statistics indicate because of the secretive nature of the business, it's not news, except in those few cases that catch the public attention. The Nigerian girls, the three young women in Cleveland, in other words the most egregious and sensational examples of human beings being captured and enslaved, these get our attention. But the problem is perpetual and enormous, and it should make every decent human being absolutely fighting mad, but it doesn't. In fact, there's abundant proof that people are fairly willing and able to turn a blind eye, and that far too many "good citizens" actually become complicit in the buying and selling of human beings.
What allows this monstrosity to continue?
The most obvious answer is poverty. Most of the trafficked humans are poor, and because of this they have few advocates. Sometimes the victims own families sell them out of desperation, but others simply have their children ripped away from them and condemned to a life of slavery, and there is very little they can do about it, because they're poor, and powerless, and because, in their world, this is simply the way things are.
But things shouldn't be like this.
I know, I'm speaking from a position of radical privilege. I know I'm a white, middle class man, and it might seem like I'm passing judgment on all those people who just don't do enough to stop the massive and repugnant injustice of trafficking in human beings. Even given the voice and resources that I have, I am aware that there is very little I can do to make a dent in this problem. Therefore, I certainly don't expect people who are being crushed by poverty and injustice to somehow make a stand against such an evil.
That would be foolish.
What I'm doing here, and what I try to do whenever I get a chance is remind folks that this is a real thing that's out there, and if you want to vent your outrage about something or other, here's a great target: the enslavement of human beings and the massive systemic injustice of poverty that courses through the veins of the monster.
Want to be mad at something?
Want to really try and change the world for the better?
Want to slay a dragon?
Don't waste your outrage on tax policies, healthcare plans or gay marriage, here is an affront to our common humanity which is bathing in the blood of our children on a massive scale, right in front of us, and we only occasionally even notice it's there.
Oh, wait... no it hasn't. The abduction of 234 Nigerian girls is a stark reminder of that fact, it has inspired lots of impotent internet outrage, and an equally impotent visit from John Kerry. I am praying that every one of those girls gets home, but I know that even if they do, they are just a drop in the bucket of the global human trafficking problem. There are millions of people who are victims of various sorts of human trafficking operations, there are men, women and children, and it's not just something that happens in Africa or Asia, it is rampant in the United States and Europe as well.
Despite the scope of the problem, which is probably actually even worse than some of the alarming statistics indicate because of the secretive nature of the business, it's not news, except in those few cases that catch the public attention. The Nigerian girls, the three young women in Cleveland, in other words the most egregious and sensational examples of human beings being captured and enslaved, these get our attention. But the problem is perpetual and enormous, and it should make every decent human being absolutely fighting mad, but it doesn't. In fact, there's abundant proof that people are fairly willing and able to turn a blind eye, and that far too many "good citizens" actually become complicit in the buying and selling of human beings.
What allows this monstrosity to continue?
The most obvious answer is poverty. Most of the trafficked humans are poor, and because of this they have few advocates. Sometimes the victims own families sell them out of desperation, but others simply have their children ripped away from them and condemned to a life of slavery, and there is very little they can do about it, because they're poor, and powerless, and because, in their world, this is simply the way things are.
But things shouldn't be like this.
I know, I'm speaking from a position of radical privilege. I know I'm a white, middle class man, and it might seem like I'm passing judgment on all those people who just don't do enough to stop the massive and repugnant injustice of trafficking in human beings. Even given the voice and resources that I have, I am aware that there is very little I can do to make a dent in this problem. Therefore, I certainly don't expect people who are being crushed by poverty and injustice to somehow make a stand against such an evil.
That would be foolish.
What I'm doing here, and what I try to do whenever I get a chance is remind folks that this is a real thing that's out there, and if you want to vent your outrage about something or other, here's a great target: the enslavement of human beings and the massive systemic injustice of poverty that courses through the veins of the monster.
Want to be mad at something?
Want to really try and change the world for the better?
Want to slay a dragon?
Don't waste your outrage on tax policies, healthcare plans or gay marriage, here is an affront to our common humanity which is bathing in the blood of our children on a massive scale, right in front of us, and we only occasionally even notice it's there.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
I once was lost... but now... well I'm still lost but at least the scenery changed.
After Emmaus, and moving on towards the Shepherd and the gate, I am thinking about conversion. The interweb-blogoplace is full of stories of converts. Mostly these days the converts are people who have moved from one form of Christian faith to another. You can read countless narratives about how one way of being the body of Christ was deemed lacking in some regard and how they have found a "better" way in whatever stream they now stand. The thing is that these "conversions" seem to happen in all sectors of the web of Christian faith: fundamentalists become progressive and (more rarely) vice versa, Catholics become Protestants and (more rarely) vice versa, but most of the movement is less dramatic in terms of ideology and has a lot more to do with personal preference than theological conviction.
I love Amazing Grace, despite the heavy rotation it gets, but lately I have become a bit weary of the zeal of the convert, and I'm rather thankful that, in the wake of several of my own spiritual experiences, I never got caught up in a fervor to try and convince everyone that what I had experienced was true for them as well. I'm not saying I'm better, I'm just not naturally inclined towards salesmanship. I was, and still am, a poor salesman, my biggest weakness is that I am far too honest about the product. In my current vocation, the product is the church, and I just can't bring myself to "sell" the church, because I am far too aware of her weaknesses.
I can't honestly tell people that their lives will be changed in this place and among this community. The best I can do is offer them a possibility that transformation might happen: if they participate, if they worship, if they forbear the unfortunate foibles of their fellow church folk, if they constantly evaluate their own sin and walk the difficult path of repentance, and if they accept forgiveness (which is sometimes the hardest sell of all).
When you read that description, does it make you want to sign up?
It doesn't surprise me when people tell me that they changed churches because they "weren't being fed." I usually want to say, "Of course you weren't it's a buffet, you have to get off your butt and go find the food." But I don't, because that would make me a jerk.
I don't get too excited when the sheep of another flock come poking their head through my doors because they heard me preach somewhere and they thought I was different or cool, or because I was so different from their pastor, because I know that being the rebound boyfriend usually doesn't pay off very well. Also I have to check my ego and remember that people should not be coming to the church where I serve because of me.
I try to learn what I can about the various conversions, and study the reasons why people move about the way they do, but it's frustrating to say the least, because for every person who leaves a church because they don't like the stodgy old liturgies, there is at least one who leaves because they can't connect with the new music.
I find myself lamenting one thing more than any other: consumerism. Because that's what a lot of this amounts to: spiritual consumerism. Underneath all the talk of God calling people to a new thing, or lifting them out of the pit, there is the same feeling that you get from a person who has switched from PC to Mac, Chevy to Ford, or Coke to Pepsi: my new thing is vastly superior to the old.
In all cases you can find an equal number of people who have been powerfully convicted in the opposite direction. Recognizing that your experience is far from objective truth, is a good place to start the journey of faith. Living with doubt and working at community is hard work, and often leads you through the valley of darkness. I remind myself that maybe the thing to learn from Jesus teaching about the narrow gate is that it requires us to enter one by one.
I hold on to that, in the midst of our consumerist culture, as I watch the migration of the sheep from place to place: as long as they enter through the gate, it really doesn't matter how they get there. That gives us the freedom to explore and maybe even get a little lost.
Sometimes being lost is the right place to be, because then you have no choice but to follow the Shepherd's voice. The zealous feeling one gets from being "found" is prone to make one obnoxious if not downright dangerous. When you think you have found the "right" group, the "right" church, the "right" way of understanding the ineffable mystery of God, you are probably missing the point.
I am profoundly grateful for being "found" by the love of God in Jesus Christ.
I know that I need to be in community to live out the way of Jesus.
I know that any community I find is going to have certain strengths and weaknesses.
I know that I am going to have to deal with frustration and things that ruffle my feathers.
I pray that the Lord will help me to walk with him on the road and be known to me in the breaking of the bread.
I pray that I will recognize the green pastures, where I am.
I love Amazing Grace, despite the heavy rotation it gets, but lately I have become a bit weary of the zeal of the convert, and I'm rather thankful that, in the wake of several of my own spiritual experiences, I never got caught up in a fervor to try and convince everyone that what I had experienced was true for them as well. I'm not saying I'm better, I'm just not naturally inclined towards salesmanship. I was, and still am, a poor salesman, my biggest weakness is that I am far too honest about the product. In my current vocation, the product is the church, and I just can't bring myself to "sell" the church, because I am far too aware of her weaknesses.
I can't honestly tell people that their lives will be changed in this place and among this community. The best I can do is offer them a possibility that transformation might happen: if they participate, if they worship, if they forbear the unfortunate foibles of their fellow church folk, if they constantly evaluate their own sin and walk the difficult path of repentance, and if they accept forgiveness (which is sometimes the hardest sell of all).
When you read that description, does it make you want to sign up?
It doesn't surprise me when people tell me that they changed churches because they "weren't being fed." I usually want to say, "Of course you weren't it's a buffet, you have to get off your butt and go find the food." But I don't, because that would make me a jerk.
I don't get too excited when the sheep of another flock come poking their head through my doors because they heard me preach somewhere and they thought I was different or cool, or because I was so different from their pastor, because I know that being the rebound boyfriend usually doesn't pay off very well. Also I have to check my ego and remember that people should not be coming to the church where I serve because of me.
I try to learn what I can about the various conversions, and study the reasons why people move about the way they do, but it's frustrating to say the least, because for every person who leaves a church because they don't like the stodgy old liturgies, there is at least one who leaves because they can't connect with the new music.
I find myself lamenting one thing more than any other: consumerism. Because that's what a lot of this amounts to: spiritual consumerism. Underneath all the talk of God calling people to a new thing, or lifting them out of the pit, there is the same feeling that you get from a person who has switched from PC to Mac, Chevy to Ford, or Coke to Pepsi: my new thing is vastly superior to the old.
In all cases you can find an equal number of people who have been powerfully convicted in the opposite direction. Recognizing that your experience is far from objective truth, is a good place to start the journey of faith. Living with doubt and working at community is hard work, and often leads you through the valley of darkness. I remind myself that maybe the thing to learn from Jesus teaching about the narrow gate is that it requires us to enter one by one.
I hold on to that, in the midst of our consumerist culture, as I watch the migration of the sheep from place to place: as long as they enter through the gate, it really doesn't matter how they get there. That gives us the freedom to explore and maybe even get a little lost.
Sometimes being lost is the right place to be, because then you have no choice but to follow the Shepherd's voice. The zealous feeling one gets from being "found" is prone to make one obnoxious if not downright dangerous. When you think you have found the "right" group, the "right" church, the "right" way of understanding the ineffable mystery of God, you are probably missing the point.
I am profoundly grateful for being "found" by the love of God in Jesus Christ.
I know that I need to be in community to live out the way of Jesus.
I know that any community I find is going to have certain strengths and weaknesses.
I know that I am going to have to deal with frustration and things that ruffle my feathers.
I pray that the Lord will help me to walk with him on the road and be known to me in the breaking of the bread.
I pray that I will recognize the green pastures, where I am.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Selling the World
In the midst of all the troubling things that go on in the world of economics and politics, something happened that seemed like a small thing. The Court of the land decided that telecommunications companies like Verizon and Comcast have the right to offer more data bandwidth to paying customers, and to restrict the bandwidth available for free to the public. This means that giants like Amazon and Google will be able to pay a fee and make sure that their pages load faster than pages that rely on the free infrastructure of the Internet. This is a decision that basically does away with "net neutrality," it does not mean that free pages like my little blog here are going to disappear, it's just going to mean that the interweb will be biased in favor of those who can and do pay for privileged status.
If you want to know why this is bad, listen to the radio, yeah they still have a thing called radio. Most radio stations are owned by a conglomerate called Clear Channel, which means that you will hear the same sorts of songs, separated into the same sorts of genres, punctuated by the same sorts of advertisements and bland radio-jockey banter, all across the country. Clear Channel, basically owns most of the radio frequencies that are open to be used by broadcasters. Which is why most of the public radio stations on the FM dial, the classical music and college radio stations are all within the 87.5-91 mhz range. The "open" frequencies go all the way from 87.5 to 108 mhz. Most of which is entirely dominated by Clear Channel, and they have run all the little independent radio stations out of town.
This is what privileging those with money does to a "public" resource. Whether it's radio frequencies, internet data or politics, it means that fewer voices can be heard. And our Supreme court has made some bad decisions in this arena of late. They have scrapped some of the rules about campaign finance in a move that specifically favors about 600 "super-donors." The fact that the SCOTUS heard a case that essentially only affects 600 people and ruled decidedly in the favor of those 600 people, arguably at the expense of the public good, is disturbing. In much the same way as the "net neutrality" ruling.
It's not that I think this is going to end the world as we know it, or even that it's totally going to wreck the interweb. It's just a blatant show of bias in our culture for the rich and powerful. In a nation that still makes some pretense of being a democracy, it is rather troubling to see the common people so apathetic as the inequity of their culture increases.
In our criminal justice system, a person who gets caught in possession of a few ounces of a regulated substance, can get more jail time than Bernie Madoff, who bilked thousands of people out of millions of dollars, and had a hand in almost totally crashing our national economy.
In our political system, the rich have a voice and the poor are lucky to have a vote. There is a difference, you know, between a voice and a vote. If you have a voice you are able to join the conversation and be heard (the being heard part is crucial). A vote makes you a commodity to be accumulated by those who truly have a voice. The voices shape the direction of culture, the votes pretty much just have to go with the flow and constantly seem to have to pick the lesser of two evils.
If Wal-Mart wants a zoning variance they can push local jurisdictions around, if Joe's Random Small Business wants one, well tough.
If Verizon want to tack on all sorts of extra fees and mysterious surcharges, they just do it, and you don't really have much of choice, what are you gonna do, use T-Mobile? Not if you actually like your phone to work. They own the infrastructure, and they suppose that means they run the show.
A wise Uncle of mine once told me that if you wonder why things are the way they are, in law or any other public arena, you have to understand that things don't just happen. Things are the way they are because someone, somewhere wants them that way, and usually it's the person who has the money to throw at the problem who gets their way.
It takes a massive, organized popular movement to counteract the influence of one George Soros or a couple of Koch brothers, and quite frankly most of the proletariat just isn't paying that much attention.
Until we do, we're probably going to get what we deserve for our apathy.
If you want to know why this is bad, listen to the radio, yeah they still have a thing called radio. Most radio stations are owned by a conglomerate called Clear Channel, which means that you will hear the same sorts of songs, separated into the same sorts of genres, punctuated by the same sorts of advertisements and bland radio-jockey banter, all across the country. Clear Channel, basically owns most of the radio frequencies that are open to be used by broadcasters. Which is why most of the public radio stations on the FM dial, the classical music and college radio stations are all within the 87.5-91 mhz range. The "open" frequencies go all the way from 87.5 to 108 mhz. Most of which is entirely dominated by Clear Channel, and they have run all the little independent radio stations out of town.
This is what privileging those with money does to a "public" resource. Whether it's radio frequencies, internet data or politics, it means that fewer voices can be heard. And our Supreme court has made some bad decisions in this arena of late. They have scrapped some of the rules about campaign finance in a move that specifically favors about 600 "super-donors." The fact that the SCOTUS heard a case that essentially only affects 600 people and ruled decidedly in the favor of those 600 people, arguably at the expense of the public good, is disturbing. In much the same way as the "net neutrality" ruling.
It's not that I think this is going to end the world as we know it, or even that it's totally going to wreck the interweb. It's just a blatant show of bias in our culture for the rich and powerful. In a nation that still makes some pretense of being a democracy, it is rather troubling to see the common people so apathetic as the inequity of their culture increases.
In our criminal justice system, a person who gets caught in possession of a few ounces of a regulated substance, can get more jail time than Bernie Madoff, who bilked thousands of people out of millions of dollars, and had a hand in almost totally crashing our national economy.
In our political system, the rich have a voice and the poor are lucky to have a vote. There is a difference, you know, between a voice and a vote. If you have a voice you are able to join the conversation and be heard (the being heard part is crucial). A vote makes you a commodity to be accumulated by those who truly have a voice. The voices shape the direction of culture, the votes pretty much just have to go with the flow and constantly seem to have to pick the lesser of two evils.
If Wal-Mart wants a zoning variance they can push local jurisdictions around, if Joe's Random Small Business wants one, well tough.
If Verizon want to tack on all sorts of extra fees and mysterious surcharges, they just do it, and you don't really have much of choice, what are you gonna do, use T-Mobile? Not if you actually like your phone to work. They own the infrastructure, and they suppose that means they run the show.
A wise Uncle of mine once told me that if you wonder why things are the way they are, in law or any other public arena, you have to understand that things don't just happen. Things are the way they are because someone, somewhere wants them that way, and usually it's the person who has the money to throw at the problem who gets their way.
It takes a massive, organized popular movement to counteract the influence of one George Soros or a couple of Koch brothers, and quite frankly most of the proletariat just isn't paying that much attention.
Until we do, we're probably going to get what we deserve for our apathy.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
What God Wants
Having kids has been a powerful theological lesson for me. I'm not saying that understanding God as a cosmic parent is the perfect theological paradigm, but for me I needed to have kids to really understand love... and sin... and grace.
The love part is obvious. From the moment they were born, I knew these two little people were absolutely the most amazing things. I knew that I would do anything for them, I knew, I think for the first time in my life, what it meant to love something more than you love yourself.
What I have come to find out is that that sort of love makes you vulnerable. It means that these people that you would die for are able to hurt you and make you angry like no one else in the world. When they disobey, when they are willful and stubborn, worst of all when they are exactly like... me. That's where I have really come to grips with sin, I mean exactly what it is. Before kids, I thought it was all about breaking rules that God had set, maybe for our own good, maybe just out of an arbitrary power trip, but rules that we ought to follow because God is God and we are his creations. After kids, I understand that sin is not just about rules, it's about abusing, perverting or neglecting a relationship. I know this because there are rules that I don't particularly mind my kids breaking. Maybe this is more of a thing for fathers, but when I see my kids pushing the boundaries a little bit, it kind of makes me proud. Even if it's not exactly safe, I want them to climb a little higher into that tree, to reach for another branch, to try for a new experience, it makes me think they're becoming solid and adventurous human beings. You can't do that without breaking some rules.
Where a line gets crossed is when they break rules out of malice and selfishness, not because they're exploring, but because they're willfully ignoring my edict. Most infuriating is when they do this because they think that my rules are stupid or irrelevant.
The reason this hurts is because I have made the rules and set the boundaries "for their own good." That phrase, which every kid hates to hear, but that the wisdom of age teaches you with hard lessons, is at the core of a very important theological understanding: God knows what is really best for us, as Creator, there is not any foreseeable situation where our own desires and intentions can possibly transcend God's knowledge of what is best for us.
As a parent, I hope someday that my kids will be able to make decisions for themselves that do actually transcend my knowledge, it means I have done my job. And I suspect that God has similar hopes for us, that we will internalize and understand the rules so that we know which ones are fundamentally important and which ones we have moved beyond. The rules I set for my 10 year old are going to change rapidly over the next few years, in some ways he is going to have more freedom, but life is also going to get more complicated, and the simple, black and white morality is going to need more nuance and grey areas are going to be unavoidable.
If God is at least as thoughtful a Creator as I am a father (which I'm certain is absolutely true), then the rules cannot be static. The rules have to change as the child grows, and sometimes mistakes must be made.
The only way my kids will ever become responsible moral agents, is if I give them the freedom to cross some lines every now and then, and if I also allow them to suffer the consequences. That is not easily done. That is not even easily imagined from my current vantage point. This is where grace is needed.
Grace to forgive bad decisions. Grace to revise the rules as needed. Grace to remember that the love that started the moment they were born should still be there and actually should grow stronger with the years. Grace to remember that all the trials they put me through are no worse or no better than the ones I put my own parents through, and grace most of all to remember that God has that kind of grace and more for me and my stumbling existence.
The love part is obvious. From the moment they were born, I knew these two little people were absolutely the most amazing things. I knew that I would do anything for them, I knew, I think for the first time in my life, what it meant to love something more than you love yourself.
What I have come to find out is that that sort of love makes you vulnerable. It means that these people that you would die for are able to hurt you and make you angry like no one else in the world. When they disobey, when they are willful and stubborn, worst of all when they are exactly like... me. That's where I have really come to grips with sin, I mean exactly what it is. Before kids, I thought it was all about breaking rules that God had set, maybe for our own good, maybe just out of an arbitrary power trip, but rules that we ought to follow because God is God and we are his creations. After kids, I understand that sin is not just about rules, it's about abusing, perverting or neglecting a relationship. I know this because there are rules that I don't particularly mind my kids breaking. Maybe this is more of a thing for fathers, but when I see my kids pushing the boundaries a little bit, it kind of makes me proud. Even if it's not exactly safe, I want them to climb a little higher into that tree, to reach for another branch, to try for a new experience, it makes me think they're becoming solid and adventurous human beings. You can't do that without breaking some rules.
Where a line gets crossed is when they break rules out of malice and selfishness, not because they're exploring, but because they're willfully ignoring my edict. Most infuriating is when they do this because they think that my rules are stupid or irrelevant.
The reason this hurts is because I have made the rules and set the boundaries "for their own good." That phrase, which every kid hates to hear, but that the wisdom of age teaches you with hard lessons, is at the core of a very important theological understanding: God knows what is really best for us, as Creator, there is not any foreseeable situation where our own desires and intentions can possibly transcend God's knowledge of what is best for us.
As a parent, I hope someday that my kids will be able to make decisions for themselves that do actually transcend my knowledge, it means I have done my job. And I suspect that God has similar hopes for us, that we will internalize and understand the rules so that we know which ones are fundamentally important and which ones we have moved beyond. The rules I set for my 10 year old are going to change rapidly over the next few years, in some ways he is going to have more freedom, but life is also going to get more complicated, and the simple, black and white morality is going to need more nuance and grey areas are going to be unavoidable.
If God is at least as thoughtful a Creator as I am a father (which I'm certain is absolutely true), then the rules cannot be static. The rules have to change as the child grows, and sometimes mistakes must be made.
The only way my kids will ever become responsible moral agents, is if I give them the freedom to cross some lines every now and then, and if I also allow them to suffer the consequences. That is not easily done. That is not even easily imagined from my current vantage point. This is where grace is needed.
Grace to forgive bad decisions. Grace to revise the rules as needed. Grace to remember that the love that started the moment they were born should still be there and actually should grow stronger with the years. Grace to remember that all the trials they put me through are no worse or no better than the ones I put my own parents through, and grace most of all to remember that God has that kind of grace and more for me and my stumbling existence.
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