To Those Who Are Being Saved

Inside the museum, infinity goes up on trial

Voices echo, "this is what salvation must be like after a while."

But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues,

You can tell by the way she smiles.

-Bob Dylan, Visions of Johanna

Sometimes I think we ought to entirely retreat into poetry, song and story for all of our meaning.  I get so worn out trying to confront the mysteries of creation and love and loving creation using mere prose.  Songs and poems let you live with an image, they force you to interpret for yourself.  For instance, reasonable people could certainly disagree about what Dylan was talking about in the above lyric, given that the context of it is a song about being haunted by the memory of a past love affair, I suspect it probably had something to do with that theme, but yet the idea of putting infinity up on trial can go so much further than that.

In a museum you walk through collections of art, some are very old, some are very new, and with each work you are given the authority and the responsibility to judge whether or not you like it.  You may interpret the work of the artist however you like, and man that can be dangerous.  Sometimes I see people walking around museums with those little talking handset things that have pre-recorded explanations of things.  I got one of those in the Cathedral in Burgos and I listened to all of about three entries before I just shut the thing off and decided to go it on my own.  I get that there is a lot of expert opinion on art, I get that there are probably "more correct" ways to interpret the work, but sometimes that just sucks all the joy and wonder out of it.

Sometimes knowing too much about what the artist intended is not a good thing.  For instance, I don't want to know exactly what Mona Lisa was smiling about.  Some of the best pictures of my kids were these pictures taken of them by a photographer who had a remote control noise maker that would make flatulent sounds at the press of a button.  It got spontaneous smiles and giggles out of three and four year olds and it produced some wonderful pictures.  Mona Lisa may have been smiling like that because DaVinci was making googly eyes at her, or because she was thinking some deep and winsome thoughts about the nature being immortalized, or she may not have even been an actual person and she was made up in DaVinci's head, or maybe she really did have the highway blues (whatever that means), the fact of the matter is: we just don't know, and that adds to the appeal of the work.

By virtue of my line of work, I say a lot of words, and I write some too.  Sometimes people hear things that I didn't think I said, or they interpret my writing in a way that is somewhat different than what I meant.  The more creative and poetic I get, the more this happens.  Often (in fact the majority of times) this is a serendipitous interpretation, they heard something that spoke to their heart, they felt the Holy Spirit moving.  I am humbled when this occurs because I know I have been at the center of something really wonderful.  But I have also had moments where my words have been twisted to something rather less than wonderful, and all I have is the internal knowledge that I didn't mean them that way.  And of course, sometimes I say things that are just plain wrong.

So when it comes to putting infinity on trial, I find that sometimes less is more, because by the above scheme, I've got a 2/3 chance of doing more harm than good.  I may improve my chances by being faithful to the work of exegesis and rooting what I do in prayer and devotion, but it still shakes out in favor of being misunderstood.  So I don't feel particularly okay making promises about what "salvation must be like."  See, in my head and heart I don't really much care, all I really need to know is that it's salvation, being saved, being pulled up out of the pit, being welcomed into the oneness of God.  Honestly, I'll be a bit surprised if heaven is actually streets paved with Gold and giant mansions for all the really good people.

That actually seems like too much of a destination oriented idea to my way of thinking.  I think that we've got work to do in the time that has been given us.  Salvation seems like more of a journey than a destination, and I really haven't known anyone who was absolutely ready to meet their Creator (I have known some people who were okay with dying, mostly because they were just tired of suffering.

Yes, I know about "Jesus Paid It All" and such.  Yes, I believe that too.  But I think we are making a mistake if with think that we can or should have salvation all sown up and figured out.  It would be like looking at the Mona Lisa and knowing exactly what she's smiling about.  It would be like walking through a museum and being forced to know only the "right" interpretation of all that beauty.  It would be putting infinity on trial, and in the process the world would a be a less interesting and less beautiful place.  Your salvation and the salvation of the world are God's masterpiece.  It is not your job to judge the artist, see the work for what it is, your interpretation might change a bit from time to time, but it is more likely that the work will change you more.

Is Okay, But...

This is how the internet works for me:  I read things like this article by Francis Schaeffer, who is the son of a famous evangelical of the 20th century (same name, but not to be confused).  I really like the premise because of the very biblical condemnation of hardness of heart.  Jesus, in fact, uses our own hardness of heart as an explanation of why divorce is acceptable according to the Law of Moses, (Matthew 10: 1-12) basically because people are broken and sometimes that leads to the necessity of divorce, but in an ideal world, it is not what God intends.
In fact, this seems to be a general leaning in Jesus' approach to the law: the law is for our protection and well being, but is not an end in and of itself.  It is not a path to God unless the relationship of law and grace is apprehended, understood and worked out (Lutheran colleagues rejoice).  In other words good behavior and ritual observance just aren't going to get you right with God.  Sin manifests itself as legalism and perhaps over-wrought fundamentalism even among those who strive for a rigorous, even austere level of religious devotion.
Schaeffer has a lot of anger about fundamentalism of all sorts, which you see the fruit of in this writing.  You need to know that his parents were major players in the rise of the religious right and the moral majority, and they were also sort of borderline cult leaders who (barely) managed to stay within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy.  You also need to know that Francis Schaeffer the elder was a contradiction in many ways: an ultra-religious sort who devoted his life to creating Christian community and evangelism, and also an extreme authoritarian, who according to his son's later writings was abusive physically and emotionally towards his wife and family.
Frank has some reasons to be angry at fundamentalists, and he is one of the loudest voices telling us that fundamentalism, in all its forms, is dangerous and to be resisted by the Church, our society and indeed by the very Spirit of God.  To which I say, "Amen."
However, I am also a bit unnerved by the shotgun approach he takes to this mission.  I'm not sure everyone will read the article with the same eyes, but I feel like he's just blasting away, in an angry tirade, and not giving full consideration that he may be, as Dylan says, "fearing not I'd become my enemy in the instant that I preach."
It is undoubtedly a difficult task to be passionate and prophetic in this age of polarization without becoming exactly the sort of demagogue you set out to unmask.  Schaeffer does not always walk the line successfully, but if you know his story and the source of  his particular bias, it gets a little easier to forgive him when he gets cranky, but you still need to know that he's dealing cards from an emotionally charged deck.
That being said, hard hearts have been on my mind a lot lately, because it seems like there are an awful lot of them out there.  People who fail the basic empathy test, and don't even come close to the radical love mandated by Christ, when it comes to the other.  Frank shines some light on the real hot button topics, but it extends into almost every arena of our life: we just don't know how to treat each other decently.  Which is stupid because we've been practicing for our whole lives and we seem to be able to do it a thousand times a day during the course of normal daily events.  We just seem to fail when it comes to ideologically loaded topics like politics, race, economics, and religion.
There's even a "rule of thumb" about not discussing those things in a bar or other social situation.  Why?  Because they might lead to an argument, or maybe even a fight. Why? Because we have not learned how to apply our basic civility to these loaded subjects.  It is not because we lack intellectual capacity or even basic decency, it's because we have learned to lead too much with our emotions.
On Star Trek: The Next Generation, the ship's counselor is a part human, part Betazoid.  Counselor Troi, is what is called an "Empath" on the show, which means she can sense feelings extremely accurately.  Betazoids are telepathic, so Troi got the emotional part of that.  It comes in awfully handy to Picard, who is a thinking man, rather uncomfortable with emotions.  But Troi's ability to sense emotions has a weakness, if her own feelings are strong, she can't always read what someone else is feeling.
This is, I think, an accurate assessment.  The more you are dominated by an emotion, the less you are able to empathize, unless that particular person is feeling the same as you are.  People can grieve together, but the worst thing for someone who is grieving is to see another person in a super, happy, wonderful situation, it's just like salt in a wound, and shuts down empathy.
It has been hard for people who feel like progress is being made with regard to civil rights, to empathize with people who still feel like they are having their world shaken underneath them.  I think this applies to the issues of racial, gender, and sexual orientation.  In each one of these cases, each stride by the oppressed feels like a threat so some privilege that has been long assumed by straight, white males.  I know this because I am a straight, white male, and if I don't keep my channels open, it's all too easy for me to take my status for granted and lose empathy for people who aren't like me.
I can like most of what Schaeffer says, but his anger worries me because I know it creates a blind spot, not just in him, but in me.  The more I agree with him, and the more of his anger I internalize the more I lose the ability to read and analyze the situation and feel empathy, in short, the harder my heart becomes.
And hard hearts will eventually get broken as surely as open ones, it will just shatter into more pieces.

Ten

And what can I tell you,

My brother, my killer,

What can I possibly say?

I guess that I miss you,

I guess I forgive you,

I'm glad that you stood in my way.

-Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat

Dear Jon,

So it's been ten years to the day since I got that phone call from Dad saying that you were gone.  The last decade has been quite a trip to say the least.  I thought, instead of writing another poem or something, I would write you a letter. This stuff doesn't always make sense so bear with me.

First, I want to say sorry, because I don't think I've always been fair to you.  Sometimes I was angry, sometimes I was maudlin, sometimes I was even downright spooky. I went through phases where I totally romanticized who you were and even, to some extent, how you died.  I know that's weird, but so many of my favorite artists and musicians have been heroin addicts, I couldn't help sometimes equating you with Kurt Cobain or William S. Burroughs or Lou Reed.  The clarity that you were just a kid who made some really bad choices took some time to sink in.  But my romantic visions were just one of the ways I had of working through the reality of loss.

After ten years, I have figured out that pretty much everything in my life that relates to your death is now much more about me than about you.  I am not the same person I was when I was 30, any more than you would have been the same person you were at 24.  Your death is a part of pretty much every thing that has taken place in my life in the past ten years.  It has effected the way I do my job, the way I raise my kids, the type of husband, brother, and son I am.  Dad and I started walking the Camino on your 34th birthday, and in our own ways each of us felt like we were taking you with us on that walk.  What I realized somewhere during that 500 miles is that you now occupy a very different place in my heart than you did a decade ago.  What you are to me now is defined more by your absence than your presence.  You're like the piece of a jigsaw puzzle that was eaten by the dog, you're always going to be missing.

I wonder most about what is missing when it comes to our family.  Mom, Dad, Julia, and all the kids, well we are who we are, and being who we are we sort of do our own thing.  The New Jersey crowd has their thing, and the four of us in my family visit it from time to time.  I recognize now that one of the greatest things about the thing that Dad and I did this spring was that it was the first time in 10 years that we actually had a vision that really, fully included each other.

Remember that trip to the Outer Banks the year before you died? The last family vacation?  It really was the last one, and I think that we can never really do that again without you.  We all have the wrong kind of stubbornness to really pull something like that together and make it work.

Speaking of the beach, you have pretty much ruined that for me, that's been sort of big pain in the rear-end for ten years now, because everyone else still freaking loves it, but it makes me sad.  I thought maybe that would pass, but it really hasn't.  I always pictured you and I and whatever assortment of offspring we had renting a big old house together and picking crabs and playing guitar on the deck and doing beach stuff.  I have this imaginary, grown up you in my head, and I just know he's never going to show up.

We have been telling the kids about you too, we have pictures of you holding Jack, during one of your detox visits to Plumville I think, you look pretty pale and sunken, and I remember what trouble you were in while we were welcoming babies and playing house.  I often wish you had actually moved into our basement, but I know somewhere that probably wouldn't have been the solution either.  Cate was born a month after you died.  You would really like her, in some ways her personality reminds me of you more than any of the other Gaskill progeny, she's always asking questions, she loves clowning around and wiling out, very emotional and compassionate, the same way you were when you were little.  And somewhere or other whenever I talk about you with the kids I know they would freaking love you, but they never got the chance.  Even if you never sort of settled down and grew up, they would still like the way you were always moving and always had some plan or scheme.  I think I bore them, the same way I used to bore you, my big adventures are always mostly in my head.  That was another thing that felt important about the Camino: it was out there, it took blood, sweat and tears.  Dad said that your trip to Tonga was sort of like your Camino. I suppose that's true, but I couldn't help thinking how much you would have loved what we were up to, and how much it would have kicked butt if you were actually with us.

Here's what I really want to say to mark 10 years: I'm trying to deal with the actual reality of you now.  I want to thank you, because in a way you helped me grow more by dying than you probably would have by living.  I know that sounds sort of crappy, know that I would rather have an actual 34 year old brother (even if he was a loser) than ten years of grief any day.  What I'm saying is that the suffering has not been for nothing.

Sometimes I look at other people who still have their brothers, taking vacations, going to ball games, having picnics etc, and I get a little jealous, but I think I understand that losing you put the pedal to the metal in some ways. I have had to wrestle with grief in my 30's the way that most people don't until they're old.  I have spent ten years writing about what this is like, singing songs that absolutely strip me raw, and trying to learn from a story that was cut off midway through the first chapter. 

Aunt Fran told us after you died that God told her you would grow much faster with Him, well I think that I have grown faster too, because of losing, and grieving and living with absence.  I'm much happier with who I am at 40 than I was at 30, and I don't think that's a coincidence.  I'm less judgmental, I'm more comfortable with sadness (and yet somehow happier and more content), and most of all I have more empathy for others who are suffering.  Losing you is an awful, yet somehow solid benchmark for a lot of the challenges we face in this life.  It is a constant reminder to laugh, cry and never take any good thing for granted.

So thank you.  Hope your growing up is coming along too.

Beneath the stains of time,

The feelings disappear,

You are somewhere else,

But I am still right here.

-NIN, Hurt

Bootstraps N' Such

It ill behooves the man who is not forced to live in a ghetto to tell those who must how to transcend its limitations.

-Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

Aside from the slightly oldish language like "ill behooves," it's easy to forget that Thurman wrote this thing 50 years ago.  Because apparently a lot of people, Republican and Democrat alike have not realistically dealt with the reality that opportunity in this country is in no way equal.  We chip away at barriers like race, sexual orientation, religious differences, and we try in fits and starts to do something about the socio-economic tragedy of our so-called land of opportunity.

There is this tendency to call every form of discrimination a phobia (homophobia, xenophobia, islamaphobia, gender-dysphoricaphobia (okay I may have made that last one up, but you get the point)).  This implies that people have neurotic fears of people who exhibit these conditions, that's what phobias are: irrational fears, perhaps even to the point of panic or being utterly disabled by that fear.  However, most phobias have some sort of trigger, and most of the common phobias are present in the general population, for instance claustrophobia, fear of small or enclosed spaces.  This is a fear that is founded in basic survival instinct, going into small places can be dangerous, i.e. caves, there can be scorpions, spiders (arachnaphobia is not just a movie) or bears and badgers, there is the danger of collapse, in other words, one might have legitimate reasons to fear small spaces, None of those actually apply to say getting an MRI, but most people find that experience somewhat unpleasant because it places them in a confined space in which they must hold still, while the thing bangs and whirs and makes various danger sounds.

Calling discriminatory or prejudiced attitudes a phobia may be correct in that it can often manifest in ways that are neurotic or irrational, but it also raises the defense mechanisms of the person you are sticking with that label.  You are essentially committing the same error that people who vilify welfare recipients or migrant workers are making, you are from your own perspective, telling someone else that their ghetto is not a place they should want to live, but you are giving them absolutely no way to get out of it, in fact, you are probably only affirming their feelings of persecution because, "who are you to tell me..."

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus encourages empathy rather than control.  His injunctions to turn the other cheek, give more than is demanded, walk an extra mile, and love your enemy, are ways out of this trap, for everyone.  They are about much more than just non-violence, they are about escape from our phobias and neuroses.  When you understand how truly difficult someone has it, you will find it harder to hate them, even if their behavior or their demeanor rubs you the wrong way.

Here is perhaps an odd example, but one that relates particularly well to the problems of racial AND economic justice: rap music.  You probably know the evolution of blues and jazz from the synthesis of African tribal music and Christian/western folk music, and how antebellum slavery and the subsequent oppression of black folk precipitated the creation of these forms that later gave birth to Rock and Roll and Rhythm and Blues.  But do you know that rap/hip hop music was born because kids living in the ghetto were too poor to own instruments?

The art of beat-box, which is making rhythms and sounds with nothing but your mouth and body, and mixing, which involved using turntables to sample and mix existing music as a dance track or a background track for a rap were innovations born out of necessity, because poor kids had neither access or encouragement to train their musical gifts in more traditional ways.

Hip Hop can be vulgar, it can be mindless and nonsensical, but in some very important ways it can also help us to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.  Artists like KRS-One and Chuck D from Public Enemy can give people living in white suburbia a sense of what it's like to live in the ghetto.  Ice Cube and Tupac Shakur can talk about life in a world of gangs and drugs, and the music is an aid to empathy.  Eminem (who is white, but grew up really poor) can tell you about what it's like to be a poor white kid from Detroit's Eight Mile trailer parks who is trying to make it as a minority in the world of rap music.  The Notorious B.I.G. can tell you what it was like to grow up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and sell drugs before "making it" in the world of entertainment.  These may be stories you don't want to hear.  They may be stories that trigger some phobias.  They may sound angry, they may use bad words, but if you want to understand the struggles they face, maybe you should listen.

There can be a lot of sifting to do, but understanding is part of what we have to do.

We need to face our fears.

We need to stop naming everyone the enemy.

We need to recover our sense of empathy and common humanity.

One of the rappers I mentioned above, Chuck D wrote this: "The minute they see me, they fear me, I'm the epitome of Public Enemy," and I don't think this is posturing as a tough guy, I think that is a lament about the fact that the world sees him as a threat: an angry black man.  I understand that, as a middle class white guy, I will never entirely understand what it's like to live in the ghetto or to be truly hemmed in by a racist system, but I believe that we can try to understand better, and at the very least stop blaming people for where they're born and criticizing them for not climbing their particular mountain of trouble the way we think they should.

Love and Death

Set me as a seal upon your heart,

As a seal upon your arm;

For love is strong as death, 

Passion fierce as the grave,

Its flashes of fire a raging flame.

-Song of Solomon 8:6

The Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs is one of those wee little books tucked away between more "important" things.  It is one of the more R-rated pieces of literature in the Bible, hiding all sorts of lusty language about breasts and loins in between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah.  It's sort of like discovering D.H. Lawrence between Nietzche and Goethe.  Yes, it's a love poem.  Yes, it is full of metaphors and pretty much impossible to read literally, and yet here is a truth that is absolutely true, so true in fact that it defies the very nature of literal readings and fundamentalism in general: "love is strong as death."

If I had to pick one phrase that summed up the narrative contained in canonical Scripture as succinctly as possible, it would be that: "Love is strong as death."  It is what is proven by God's involvement with the children of Abraham, despite all the ways they go wrong. It is what is proven by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, it is what (I believe) will be proven about all of Creation when everything is said and done.

See also 1 Corinthians 13: "and now these three remain: faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love."  Sometimes it's hard to hold on to that truth, I mean when things go sour.  When it looks for a moment like death is going to win, when the cry that is on our hearts is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

I think it's a mistake to brush that moment off, I think love and death are connected in a very yin-yang sort of relationship.  After all, the reason why we love on a biological level is so that we can procreate, and the reason why we procreate is because we are not immortal, and so there is a need created by death to which love is the answer.  The mystery at the core of this is stated in 1 John: God is love.  The Creator has made everything that is because the essence of being is love.

The majority of English translations keep the equation in balance: "Love is strong as death" or "as strong as death" though a few do actually tip the balance in favor of love (CEV) for instance, but I think that's a mistake, reading a bit too much triumphalism into the text.  Which we tend to do... I tend to do... because I want it to be true.  I like love, I'm not a big fan of death, but I do recognize the part it has to play.  As I mentioned yesterday, it would seem there are times where love does not win the battle.  There are times when hatred, fear and anger get the best of us.  

The King James Version, which I will go to sometimes for translations of poetry in Scripture (but not much else) says: "Love is strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave."  Now, as a whole, I prefer the "passion/ fierce" reading, but I can see the balance coming out, and the relationship that gets easily twisted when we love the wrong things or love in the wrong way.

Yes, you can love wrong.  You can love selfishly, you can love in a way that is controlling and bitter.  You can love in ways that honestly have no business calling themselves love.  Love can have a bit of an identity crisis, in that it is sometimes hard to define, and it does not always stand up and shout about itself.  That job is left to poets and musicians.  That is one way you can tell that death is love's equal, it is powerful enough to walk unabashedly into the room and proclaim it's nature with no hiding or obfuscation.  Death is unapologetic and undeniable.

As Paul describes love in 1 Corinthians 13, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth."

If you follow with that definition, and Jesus' call to love your neighbors and your enemies you will find that there is an awful lot of very bad behavior going on in the world today, much of it being perpetrated by people who are supposed to believe that "love is strong as death."

We get this so very wrong, especially in those moments when it's most crucial to get it right. As I look around I see people who are self-identified Christians totally failing the love test.  They are acting with hatred and fear in their hearts, they are raging against death while trying to use the vocabulary of violence and power, but those words belong to death, death defines them and gives them their true weight.

Love is strong as death, but it doesn't get to use the same weapons.  When love wins it sometimes looks like a cross.  When love wins it doesn't mean there is no tomb.  Love wins when it can take all the darkness and violence death has to deal out and still say, "I forgive, I love, I am love."

Now, Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Outrage

A few days ago four Marines and one Navy officer were killed in Chattanooga Tennessee by Mohammed Abdulazeez.  The latest in a litany of all too frequent acts of mass violence, several of which have been directed at Military bases and personnel. Make no mistake, this tragedy is no less heartbreaking than any of the others, but as a nation we know how to deal with this.  They were soldiers, we lower our flags, we honor their memories and add their names to the list of the honored dead... oh and we start looking for the revenge.
This time too, the killer's name was Mohammed, not Dylan or James, we know what that's about right?  Like Osama and Saddam, he's the same sort of problem, a terrorist that got's to be got.  The only problem is that he's not part of some huge conspiracy, he was essentially the same as Dylan Roof (Charleston), James Holmes (Aurora), or Aaron Alexis (DC Navy Yard), he was, according to what we're finding out now, a man battling depression and possibly other forms of mental illness.  He was, in fact, Muslim, but he was also American.  He was a bit perturbed by the fact that his own government treated him as a criminal because of his name and his heritage, but it is unclear whether or not he ever actually became a terrorist by the definition most of us have in our heads.
It would make sorting out this whole tragedy that much simpler if he were found to have had some connection or even coaching from some middle eastern "death to America" types.  It would be great if, for a change, he wasn't just another case of our own disturbed, violence obsessed, psyche running amok and turning an unstable and disaffected young man into a killer.  It would be "easier" for us to handle a foreign threat, than to find out once again that "the killer is calling from inside the house."
Shooting sprees have been a thing in this country for quite a while.  You had Charles Whitman in the clock tower at the university of Texas in 1966, Sylvia Seegrist at the Springfield (PA) mall in 1985, Jillian Robbins (who I was actually acquainted with) at Penn State in 1996, Ryan Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School, Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary, James Holmes at a movie theater in Aurora Colorado, Aaron Alexis at the DC Navy Yard, Dylan Roof at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, and now Mohammed Abdulazeez in Chattanooga Tennessee.
And of course there are more, those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head (though I did have to Google some of the names). With the exception of Harris and Klebold, who worked together and planned rather extensively, it was more of a psychotic break than an evil conspiracy.  You'll notice there are a lot of white men (though women do get on the list), also Alexis was black, and now we have an Arab.
The core problem is still mental illness, it can be glossed over with white supremacy, rage at the government, anger at bullies, Muslim extremism, bad break-ups, but at the end of the day it's a lot more complicated than any of those things.  It is extreme disassociation, it is a combination of hatred of others and profound self-loathing.
We can fight the war on terror from now until Jesus returns, we're not going to stop this problem.  We can eliminate Al Quaida, ISIS, and whatever pops up to replace them, but unless we come up for an absolute cure for mental illness (or at least the stew of them that lead to this sort of thing) we will never be safe.  Our best defense is not security, locking all of our doors and windows doesn't help when the killer is in the house.  Our best defense is community.  Community that cares and pays enough attention to notice when someone is going off the rails.  Community that doesn't stigmatize people who actually try to get help.  Community that holds people strongly enough so that these sorts of explosions don't happen (at least not as frequently).
I mentioned that I knew one of the people on the list: Jillian Robbins, now I don't mean I was close with her, but she did sort of move in the same crowd as me and State College is a relatively small world.  She was a waitress at the Ye Olde College Diner where you could get cheap food and bad coffee.  When I say I knew her, I mean I knew her name before she made the news and became infamous.  She seemed pretty normal, and by normal, I mean not that much more disturbed than any of my other acquaintances.
So many of "my people" had been diagnosed with some sort of mood disorder.  I'm not talking like loony bin crazy, I'm just talking counseling and prescription meds crazy.  SSRI's (Selective Seratonin Re-uptake Inhibitors) were the new thing for treating everything from severe bipolarity to the Monday blues.  And for a minute, people thought they had found the magic bullet in treating various sorts of mental illness.  Once there was a cure other than bomb-out tranquilizers like Lithium and Thorazine, or electroshock therapy, it seemed like mood disorders became sort of trendy. Depression was kind of ubiquitous, everybody was depressed, it was kind of our thing.
In the movie Reality Bites, which is so Gen-Xish that it really ought to come with a prescription for Prozac, the main characters leave the following message on their answering machine: "Hello, you have reached the winter of our discontent." It was literary (quoting Shakespeare and Steinbeck), and nihilistic and it pretty much summed up the feeling of a bunch of over-privileged and under-employed "slackers." The world we grew up in was defined by television and broken families and conspicuous consumption and Reaganomics, in other words it was like a plastic utopia that covered a really broken set of assumptions.  Kids and young people tend to see through that sort of facade, even if they can't quite sort out what is actually going on, they know that things just seem false. Our community extended only as far as the people we spent our days and nights with, and the rest of the world, including most adults, and a good number of "normal" people, just didn't understand what we were going through.
At that time, it felt like there would never be an end to the adolescent and post-adolescent malaise that gripped us.  Sometimes tragedy was the only thing that broke the monotony, we cried when Kurt Cobain committed suicide, we were wide eyed when Columbine happened or when we heard about the Rwandan Genocide, but for the most part our lives were lived in between media circuses.  The world seemed un-real and un-friendly, and what was probably worst of all it seemed like there was no hope.
This is as close as I ever got to the sort of dysphoria that can eventually lead to deciding that shooting a bunch of folks is a good idea.  I had a family and a few friends that always kept me away from that ledge.  Jillian did not, at least she didn't the day she climbed under a bush with a rifle and started picking people off.  She had disconnected and alienated most of the people who knew her, and when she broke no one knew it until it was too late.
I just don't know how you can fix that.  I know community is the answer, but it's not fool proof.  I know that, somehow or other, love is the only thing that can beat it once and for all, but most of us don't even know how to apply it or even when it's needed.  And no, as we saw with Dylan Roof, sometimes love doesn't always stop the violence.  It breaks my heart to think that there were so many chances for him to feel the love and acceptance of the people who he was about to kill, and yet... it never broke through. I think a state of being where love and community always win is actually what Jesus was talking about when he talked about the Kingdom of Heaven.  We ain't there yet.
But we can take small victories as we sit in the wake of tragedies like this, in other words, the Kingdom of Heaven can draw near to us.  Refuse to accept easy answers, repent, repent of our personal sins and of the sins of our society.  Instead of feeling righteous outrage, allow your heart to break for those who were killed.  If you are a Jesus-follower, that has to include the ones who did the killing, you know, the ones you like to name your enemy, you're supposed to forgive them.
I know, it seems crazy, but it's crazy in a way that sets you free.  It's crazy in a way that breaks this cycle of violence all to pieces.
The fact of the matter is that you may very well know someone who is inches away from being the next name on the list of mass shooters.  You can either live in fear of that, or you can do what Jesus suggested: Love them.  You don't know who they are, or what's going to break them, so you have to practice love towards everyone. Be kind, compassionate and understanding.  You don't have to fix them, you probably can't anyway, but you can be the Body of Christ.
It's not easy, but it's the way.

Words that Have Meaning

Thinking and communication lesson for today: defining the term "mutually exclusive."
I'm doing this as a public service, because lots of people seem to either not know it exists or severely misapprehend what it means.  Mutually exclusive means that two things necessarily preclude each other, they cannot overlap.  In a venn diagram mutually exclusive things are represented by two entirely separate spheres.  It is an old rhetorical trick to pretend that two things are mutually exclusive when they are not: for instance not everyone who wants to defend the confederate flag is a racist, the proof of that is that there have been black people who defend it.  However, a lot of people who proudly display the battle flag are racist, and in fact, the KKK and various other movements whose sole purpose was the oppression and intimidation of non-white people have rather enthusiastically used the flag as a symbol, therefore, despite the fact that it might be seen in another light, it's dominant message is racist.  There is a large enough overlap to make the argument that being racist and displaying the flag are mutually exclusive categories.
Example two: courage.  Caitlyn Jenner is courageous for doing what she has done in the public eye.  So are firefighters, soldiers and police.  Courage of one sort does not preclude courage of another sort.  The fact that something, which many people still understand very poorly (gender reassignment), can require courage does not somehow diminish the courage it takes to run into a gunfight or a fire to save someone's life.  While many would like to make these two things antithetical, they are not.
Example three: Abortion versus women's rights.  This is one of the single most divisive subjects of the past 50 years, and it has often been presented in tragically over-simplified rhetoric.  The fact of the matter is that choice and life are not mutually exclusive.  The lives of the unborn and the lives of their mothers cannot be declared mutually exclusive no matter how many thought gymnastics you want to do.  As a matter of fact educating and supporting women in reproductive choice is the absolute best way to reduce the number of abortions performed for non-health reasons.  I'm all for choice, and I'm also really against killing babies, and I am always looking for that wonderful place where those two things overlap.
Are there things that are mutually exclusive in the news?  Sure:
Donald Trump and sanity/good hair.
Hilary Clinton and being likeable.
Fox News and actual journalism.
Advertising and honesty.
You get the idea.

Of What Is, and What Should Never Be

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

-Romans 8: 38-39

Every day I read many things.  And I'm not going to cite them or link them here, because I don't want to pick a fight with any of them.  In fact, I will stipulate at the outset: many of these things that I read contain thoughtful commentary and helpful suggestions.  Some of them are written with passion and conviction, others just seem cynical and hopeless, some of them I agree with and some of them make my blood boil a little.  What they amount to, in this age of the interweb, is the internal dialogue of our church and our culture, and I fear that we are becoming a bit schizophrenic, and I mean that in the most clinical sense possible, because I don't want to disparage people suffering with mental illness. For a good Explanation of Schizophrenia go here.

One of the interesting things pointed out by the above article is the fact that many people with schizophrenia do not seem to be odd, until you find out what is really going on in their head, and then, if you have an ounce of compassion, you will understand why they find it hard to deal with what we call reality.

The amount of paranoia and distrust that wracks our culture is worthy of a entry in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, I know it's not a good acronym, don't be so OCD).  And it afflicts right and left alike, in fact there seems to be more time dedicated to bashing the opposition than there does to actually solving problems, and that, friends and neighbors, is a HUGE problem.

Honestly though, I don't know what to do about the fact that Ann Coulter and Rachel Maddow are probably never going to come to an understanding, so I'm going to talk to my church peeps.  Because while I cannot really appeal to the Apostle Paul on any rational secular grounds, I'm going to have to retreat to a place where the letter to Rome has some weight.  And what I'm going to say from that place is just freaking stop it already, stop with the bickering, stop with the endless prophecies of doom AND the polyanna-ish proclamations that everything's gonna be alright.  Can we please deal with reality?

Christianity ain't what it used to be, but given that what it used to be was pretty twisted, maybe that's okay.  No business strategies masquerading as evangelism are going to bring back our hegemony, and I would argue that we shouldn't actually even want it back, it was essentially like a boil on the backside of the church in the first place, it actually made us less likely to be conformed to the image of Christ, and it's actually a miracle that we ever held on to anything like the Good News through all of that.

As long as we keep taking a worldly approach we are damned.  We can make our worship new and exciting and some people will come and like it, but some people will wonder what happened to our old favorite hymns and liturgical tradition.  We can be fired up about evangelism, preaching and teaching and getting out there in the world and being involved in all sorts of do-gooding, and some people will think that's awesome and other people will think it's annoying.  We can speak up for social justice, and some people will applaud our efforts, others will call us liberal sell outs, still others will be upset because we don't go far enough.

We can focus on the young.

We can focus on the old.

We can build a new building, we can sell off the one we have, we can meet at Starbucks or in the back room of a bar.  We can have long sermons, short sermons, video, no video, we can advertise, or not.  Our website and our Facebook page might be great, not so great or non-existent.

We can try to live out or faith or live into our faith, we can be doctrinally rigid or we can bend over backwards to be inclusive, we can be biblical (whatever that happens to mean to you at the moment), we can get on our knees and pray, we can handle poisonous snakes for that matter, but...

IT

WILL

NOT

HELP.

That is the hard reality.  At this point there is no way for the Church to be all things to all people, and it's not our fault, the world is crazy, and it's making us crazy too.

We have to be sane.

The good news is that we can be.

We've done it before when things were falling apart.

We can, not because we're good enough or righteous enough or somehow immune to the insanity, but because we're rooted in the love of God in Christ.  That's what will survive, everything else is negotiable and perishable.  Be at peace with that, it's really okay.

What's not okay, and in fact, sort of insane is trying to hold on to things that don't make sense.  Trying to sync up faith in Jesus Christ with worldly empires, trying to enforce "Christian" values in a world that does not call Jesus Lord, trying to use fear to get people to obey a god that you swear, honestly, really does love them enough to condemn them to eternal torment, trying to pretend that if people don't say the right words or attend the right church, then their Creator is just going to give up on them once and for all... that stuff is pretty schizophrenic.

Remember, Paul's letters were all written to people who had already signed on for the whole Jesus is Lord experience, they were meant to encourage and build up, not convince.  He was writing to a church living in a world that, contrary to some of our silliest notions, was not less messed up than the one we currently inhabit.  And he tells them nothing can separate them from the love of God in Jesus Christ.  Two thousand years later that's still true.

The Mystery of Why

If humankind could have known God without the world,

God would never have created the world.

-Meister Eckhart

Here I go stealing from Richard Rohr's daily devotion again (I'm not the only one, almost every one gets linked to facebook by some clergy colleague of mine or other).  But I have to admit, I love the idea that Eckhart puts out there, which is essentially that creation is an act of love, it flows out of God's gracious desire to know and be known, it is not a necessity, but rather it is a way in which we are given the chance to experience God.

Is this anthropocentric?  You betcha, of course it may not just be humankind that benefits from the existence of the universe. I would absolutely subscribe to the notion that God's ability to know and be known is rather deeper and wider than we can imagine.  But what really matters to us, at this juncture in our spiritual history, is that we can and should view creation as part of the divine movement of God's Spirit as opposed to something separate and broken and even evil, which is the gnostic impulse, which has been the bugaboo of the Abrahamic faiths for a very long time.

The thing that keeps me coming back to Rohr over and over again is the way he sort of pulls me towards non-dualistic thinking, which he equates with the mystics that exist in many different faith traditions.  But I have to admit, I don't feel much affinity for the word mystic on a gut level.  I think of mystics as people who are sort of nebulous and who, while they certainly produce moments of profound truth, tend to dissolve like a fog.  Rohr presents dualistic thought as a necessary step in maturing, not something to be despised or rejected, simply grown out of, like falling in love with the wrong person or some unfortunate fashion fad.  Rohr repeatedly mentions that people in the dualistic mode of thought tend to think that mystics are nuts, which I find to be true.  Eckhart, Julian of Norwich and John of the Cross were not my favorites in Seminary, which I would say marked a high-water point for me in terms of dualistic thinking.  Now I read them with different eyes.

Oddly enough, at one point, before my religious journey really began, my faith journey took me through another sort of non-dualistic phase, where I did not judge right or wrong or black or white, or at least I thought I didn't.  But rather than leading me "further up and further in" as C.S, Lewis winsomely describes the journey, this phase led to a rather bleak landscape that more closely resembled Dante's Limbo than the light of heaven.  In the early years of my spiritually awake period, while I was working through the often rigorous motions of dualistic thought again, I judged this period as dissolute and vain.  Learning to let go of that judgment and trying to compartmentalize all my experiences in a neat, linear fashion, has been part of moving towards a more non-dual mode of thinking.  Part of that motion has been to learn to show grace and empathy towards people, including my former selves, who were trapped either in a world of judgmental dualism or a bleak shadow of mysticism that did not welcome the Holy Spirit in any form.

This is one of the wonders of God's creativity that almost buckles my knees: there are so many options and possibilities for what we can be and what we can know and what we can think.  The divine relationship of the Trinity is at the center of all of them, and is indeed the source of all of them, including the shadows that it casts.

Scripture says, "The Earth is the Lord's and all that and all that is in it, the world those who live in it;" Psalm 24:1  How seriously should we take that? How big do we want to let that get?  Dualism gives a brief nod to the cosmic implications of that verse (and sentiments like it that are rather common in Scripture if  you want to get proof texty), and then starts naming all the rules and regulations about what we should do in light of that reality.  Non-dual thinking, so it seems to me, simply sits with the reality of God's creative love and lets the knowledge sort of wash over it.  There may be an insight, there may be an inspiration, there may even be a motivation to go and do something, but the mystic does not start with the desire of results in mind, they do not demand answers to their questions, they rather let God speak what God will and listen with a holy hunger.

To some this sounds scary, to others simply too vague.  I wonder myself what practical implications it has for the church.  It simply does not lend itself to practicality, but by all the saints it does help you love God.  The Love is extravagant.  Imagine this: God has made the entire universe, in all it's vastness and mystery, for you.  You certainly don't need all that, but it's for you nonetheless.  Once you get as much of a grip on that as you possibly can, imagine also that you who have been so extravagantly loved are called to share that love with everyone and everything.

Jesus says, "All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me." (Mt 28:18)  He understands this: the vastness of the universe and the intricacies of creation are for him, so that he might know God and be known by God.  The immediate consequence of that reality is that it needs to be shared, it needs to be taught, it needs to be spread to all nations because it is Good News.

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

The youth had lost their sense of belonging.  They did not count; there was no center of hope for their marginal egos.  According to my friend, Hitler told them: "No one loves you - I love you; no one will give you work - I will give you work; no one wants you - I want you."  And when they saw the sunlight in his eyes they dropped their tools and followed him.

-Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

I know how dangerous and spurious it is to bring Adolf Hitler into an argument.  I am aware of Godwin's Law, but give me a minute, because I'm not going to compare anyone to Hitler.  I am, however, going to expand on what Mr. Thurman says about the desperation of people who feel their backs are against the wall.

Who among us, particularly those of us for whom World War II is practically ancient history, hasn't wondered how in the hell a crazy bleepity-bleep like Hitler ever got to impose his particular brand of insanity on the world.  The seventh grade history explanation is: "It was the economy stupid."  The Treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI, crippled Germany and people were using wheelbarrows full of marks to buy bread.  You've heard that right?  Well just imagine if you didn't have wheelbarrows full of marks.  Imagine if you were young and/or poor.  Imagine if the world seemed to be punishing you or forgetting you in turns.  Imagine that your back really was against the wall, and then someone told you that there was someone specific to blame for that.

Hitler blended patriotism, hatred, fear and the actual desperation of the German people into a toxic concoction called the Nazi party.  He crafted a vision: the thousand year Reich, he gave them a plan involving the power of the Wehrmacht and the propaganda and thought control of the Gestapo, and he made sure that his venom always had somewhere to vent.  But don't ever forget that it started with the ability to put food on the table and make people feel like they were part of something.

Disenfranchised people feel like they have very little to lose, and everything to gain.  Keep grinding someone into the dirt long enough and they will hate you to the very core of their soul, and it doesn't even matter if you meant to oppress them in the first place.  It doesn't even matter if you knew it was happening.  Today we have Al Quaida, ISIS, Boko Haram, more white supremacist groups than you can shake a stick at, and within almost any minority community you have militant radical and/or fundamentalist factions that breathe the fumes of hatred, we even have nations (like Iran and Pakistan) that have practically adopted what Thurman refers to as a "marginal ego." Meaning that they feel left out and persecuted by someone or anyone, it doesn't really matter who or what they hate, only that they do.

Their hatred and persecuted feelings can be real or imagined.  You could be an incarcerated young man from the ghetto who felt he never had any choice but to deal drugs and join a gang, or you could be Donald Trump and feel that the world truly is hostile to billionaire white guys, honestly it doesn't matter, when Hitler tells you what you want to hear, you're going to see the sunlight in his eyes.

Humans are masters at believing what they want to believe.  I would call it almost a survival instinct: always find the threat, always feel like your back is against the wall, name that enemy and go for the throat.  It's the only way to protect what you love and value.

The path to the Dark Side.

Here's what I see America: everyone feels persecuted, marginalized and left out: black, white, brown and Native, Asian; Jew, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Mormon, Scientologist, Jehovah's witness, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccan, Pagan, you name it, they feel like no one gets them, and for the most part they feed on that feeling.  There's just enough vague anxiety to spread around and make it feel real, there's just enough shaming and language policing to make people nervous about actually trying to talk to each other, and God forbid you forget to "check your privilege."  Oh yeah, and there are actually really terrible and oppressive things that happen too: church shootings, police brutality, riots, and oh so much racism, anger and hatred pointed in every direction.  Sometimes it seems like this melting pot is cooking an awfully bad tasting stew.

The difference here, at least this is what I hope, is that we all feel like we belong to this thing called the United States.  We have things that hold us together, and though those things may be tested, they are made of sterner stuff than most of us can imagine.  We have an interesting couple of years coming up here, there's going to be a lot of politicking going on, listen to the voices that remind you that we're all connected, and that there is a such thing as the greater good.  Filter out the voices that encourage you to retreat into little cliques and self interest groups.  Watch the fear mongers, they are not to be trusted, even if you suspect they may be right.  In other words watch out for all the Hitlers, and I'm not pointing fingers here, because I promised I wasn't going to break Godwin's law.  Just remember that Hitler was able to be Hitler because he gave people who were desperate something to believe in.  Apparently it's too late to say, "don't be desperate," so I'll just say be careful what you believe in.

Moving On

For 35 days we moved.  Every single morning we woke up, packed everything we had and walked to another place.  About a week in, I started to notice the dynamics of this practice: some places were easy to leave, other places felt a little like leaving home.  People too, you never knew if you would see the same people come evening, maybe they went farther or not as far, maybe they picked another albergue.  Some people were easy to part with, others you left with a hope that your paths would cross again.
Aside from homesickness, the constant moving was perhaps the biggest challenge of the Camino, and yet it was also a compulsion.  The thought of staying somewhere for two nights seemed odd to both Dad and me.  We talked about it any time someone mentioned staying somewhere to have a bit more of a look around: Leon, Astorga, Ponferrada, Sarria, the thought crossed our mind that maybe we should just take a day off.  But we didn't and our justification was mostly momentum, we didn't want to stop, because we feared the difficulty of starting to move again.  As long as we did this every day, it was routine, or as close to routine as you can get when you're a pilgrim.
There were a few days at the end where we had to re-adjust to staying in the same place.  We stayed two days in Santiago, and resisted the urge to drive or bus it out to Finisterre and Muxia, because we sort of knew that we had to stop moving somewhere.  Personally, I tried to relish the chance to just be still, but it was difficult, partly because I really wanted to be home, to finish the journey.
Since I have been home I have felt very content to just be where I am.  Sometimes I have dreams where I'm moving again, sometimes the idea that I moved that much for that long seems like a dream. It's not all good though, my body is quickly softening and spreading out again, my sedentary habits are re-asserting themselves, and when I observe this, I know I need to get moving to something, but what?
The suction of comfort and familiarity is a powerful thing, and not always a bad thing.  If I were to give in to the wandering I would inflict far too much suffering on those who rely on me, and quite frankly it's not an option.  So I'm trying to learn what I can from my moving and from the experience of inertia, both in the habit of moving, and in the habit of staying.
I think there is always tension between the progressive impulse to change (hopefully for the better) and the conservative notion that we ought to keep things stable.  There is value in both things.  My pilgrimage taught me that the next thing was not always better than the last thing, and the notion that you were going to come to the end of your struggles over the next rise was an unhelpful and often cruel delusion.  But there is also a necessity to keep moving and not over-idealize the past and the status quo.
I hear a lot of rhetoric that mentions "taking back our country," or "turning our nation back to God," both of which ring with a prophetic notion of repentance, but when I look back at where we've come from, I don't think there is much prophetic about it at all.  The truth of the matter is that we are, perhaps too slowly, making progress.  I keep in mind Martin Luther King Jr's statement about the arc of history being long and "bending towards justice."  Lately I have been feeling like it might be nice if it bent a little faster, but I understand that it probably can't, things might start breaking.
Don't get me wrong, I have been steeped in reformed theology long enough to know that we are never going to reach the promised land. I know that this pilgrimage we are on is never ending, that doesn't mean we just get to pitch our tents in the valley of the past and stay there hoping we can hold on to what we have.  That is, in essence, despising the way that God is leading us, out of slavery and oppression and into freedom.  Do you want to go back to Egypt?  Does the future scare you?  Why?  Have you no faith?
The world was never perfect, not in 1950, not in 1850, not in the first century, go back as far as you need to, there is never a place where everything was just wonderful for everyone.  You Bible reading types know that Eden didn't even make it out of the third chapter of Genesis.  You might hope that some day God is going to magically make it all better, everything that has happened since "The Beginning," seems to indicate that God is pretty intent on having creation do its thing, and that  means us as well, with our sins and our stuttering and inconstant progress.
It is a grave theological error to make God as impatient and short-sighted as we are.
Let me be clear, God is not waiting for us to finally get it right.  It is not as though Creation is incomplete or broken.  What has been made is good, if there is anything out of joint about the whole thing, it's us.  We don't need to fix anything but ourselves and we are incapable even of doing that without God's grace.  I know, it's not fun to be constantly on the move, and not really sure of where you're going, but trust me, you can get used to it.

Salesmanship

When I was a kid we had a visit from an encyclopedia salesman.  I listened as he gave my parents a very elaborate and (to me) persuasive pitch about how we needed this very expensive set of books.  My entire academic future seemed to hinge on whether I had access to this magical compendium of knowledge, complete with multiple layer maps and illustrations.  Of course the books cost as much the car my parents owned at the time, and of course despite my protests, they let this man walk out the door without placing an order, even though convenient financing was available.
That is my first memory of a sales pitch, and as you can probably imagine, it was not a positive experience.  As an eight year old kid, I had no frame of reference to balance out the fear mongering and urgency that seemed to be attached to getting my parents to by encyclopedias, something they honestly didn't need, because libraries exist.  Eight year old me had no idea about any of that.
Fast forward to my first job out of college: selling office supplies and electronics at Staples (yes, that is very GenX, working retail with a bachelor's degree in your pocket).  I discovered that my own personal sales style was to actually try and figure out what people needed and help them get it.  I was just plain bad at what was called, in the training modules: up-selling, or trying to get people to buy a more expensive thing.  I was lousy at selling extended warranties, which were major sources of bonuses for me and profit margin for the store.
Customers actually liked me, because I was honest about stuff that they were hesitant about.  I could sell things that I thought were good: talk to me about HP laserjet printers from the mid 1990s, those things were amazing and lasted forever, they didn't do color though and so I usually ended up hawking a lot of inkjet printers of various makes, which I knew were fickle and unreliable beasts that would probably crap out in a year or so (I could actually justify the extended warranties on those).
A lot has changed in almost 20 years, but I'm still not much of a salesman. It would probably benefit me professionally if I was better at it.  After all, I'm now "selling" a product in which I actually believe: the redeeming power of Christ and the community of his Church.  I truly believe that Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life.  I believe that individuals can live more truly and fully in faith.  I believe that the world can be changed by people who authentically follow Jesus.
But I still don't want to sell it.
Honestly, I believe that if it needs to be "sold," it's probably not worth buying (I'm sure many will disagree with that assumption, that's okay).
I have, in my own mind, found the three things that should absolutely sell themselves: faith, hope and love.  So my strategy is to simply let the products speak for themselves.
I am pretty turned off by people who are essentially selling the same thing as me, but who seem to be perfectly okay using fear, false information and even violence to "spread the Good News." I'm just not sure how that works.  I understand that you can "sell" people with those methods, I get that they have been effective in the past, what I don't get is how people square up using those tools in the name of Jesus.
In my mind, if a church grows because it manages to make people fear God's wrath, it is not really growing in the Spirit of Christ.  Likewise, if a church grows because it nurtures it's people in positive thinking and strategies for worldly prosperity, I question the authenticity.  I try not to judge another man's servant, but I'm pretty sure they're not following the Jesus I find in the Gospels.
I see, in current trends, a reflection of how the various "sales techniques" the church has been using are failing.  Fear isn't pushing the numbers the same way it used to, but it can still get some.  Prosperity can still inspire faith that's a mile wide and an inch deep, but there is, I feel, a deep hunger for something more real.
If the problems have come from old sales models, maybe we should look at the newer ones: Carmax and Amazon.  Both emphasize a model where the product takes center stage and the salesman is no longer the driving force.  Don't get me wrong, they both have sales practices, and teams of people working on selling, but there's a crucial difference: it doesn't push people's buttons, it just lets them choose what they really want.  Carmax has become one of the most popular ways to purchase a new vehicle, one that traditional dealerships are starting to emulate (partially out of necessity).  It's popular because you don't have to go through the "let me go talk to my manager" sort of nonsense that everyone who ever bought a car had to sit through.  Amazon is practically taking over the world because you can get exactly what you want, fast with a whole lot less hassle than it used to take to drive to the mall or even a big box store.  When you browse Amazon you have lots of product information and the ability to see what others thought of the same product, you can give feedback of your own and the more people participate in the process, the better the overall thing works for all.
Amazon uses affinity algorithms to put adds and email in your way that are meant to lead you into buying more stuff, but there is never anything like a pushy salesperson or a high pressure sell.
It bears mentioning that Amazon also loses money, but continues to grow, in odd defiance of economic common sense, but that is perhaps what makes it something the church could learn from: it's not necessarily about the bottom line, sometimes it's just about giving people what they need.  Are we serving the poor?  Are we bringing people into closer relationship with God?  Are we challenging people to grow in faith?  Are we giving hope to the hopeless?  Are we loving?
The product and our methods and behavior are not separable.  If Amazon all of the sudden stopped being fast and convenient and out-servicing other retail methods, it would implode with a quickness.
To some extent, I think, the church has let go of the world-changing power of what it has to sell: the love of God, the fellowship of the Spirit and the grace of Jesus Christ, as the old benediction goes.
We need to remember that, honestly, those things sell themselves.

Law of the Land

Then he (Jesus) said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, 

and to God the things that are God's."

-Matthew 22: 21b

For further discussion (and expansion) of this concept see Romans 13: 1-7, where Paul calls worldly authorities "instituted by God."  Okay "biblical" people, I give you Jesus himself and his lawyer Paul both telling you that you should obey and honor the law of the land.  For you who feel that the Supreme Court has made a terrible mistake and is on the verge of brutally squelching your religious freedom, I ask you to consider these two teachers of our faith.

Do you think that the Roman Empire was friendly to them?

In fact, it put both of them to death.

Do you think that Caesar was a reasonable ruler, fair and just?  Do you think the Roman Empire was a wonderful place to live for people who refused to offer sacrifice to the Roman Pantheon and Caesar himself?  Do you think there was ever a thought given to religious freedom?

Do you think that being forced to make a cake for a gay wedding or even being pressured to perform a wedding ceremony is in any way analogous to being crucified or burned alive?

Do you think that even these minor collapses of religious freedom are likely to happen in a nation that hallows freedom of religion and separation of church and state in it's very first Constitutional Amendment, the top of the list of the Bill of Rights?

The fact of the matter is that the law of the land has changed, and for those who would try to follow a coherent Christian ethic, I mean if the "love your neighbor" thing wasn't enough to push you over to the rainbow connection, you have this now.  The laws of our society now recognize that same gender couples have the same rights and privileges as "traditional" couples when it comes to the civil arrangement called marriage.  This in no way re-defines marriage for churches like the Roman Catholic Church, which considers it a sacrament, or for any other denomination for which it may be a simple rite or ritual.  My own denomination did this re-defining a few months ago, and so the way is clear for same gender couples to be married in my church.  I could, and I probably would, if it was entirely up to me, but still it's not, because I have another yoke on my shoulders and that is pastoral care for my congregation, which means I need to consider the feelings of the people in my flock; are they going to be deeply offended by a same gender marriage in their church?  I don't know the answer to that question for every single person, so I have to do my best to sort it out.

My point is, I am beholden to a whole host of written and unwritten laws, a veritable web of accountability and relationships.  Following the law of the land is the least of my worries.  As it should be for any clergy.

As Paul says, "Do you wish to have no fear of the authority?  Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God's servant for your good."

Did I mention that the authorities in his day were the bloody Romans?  Did I mention that they put him to death as they did Jesus and the rest of the Apostles?

Do you think he was in denial of that impending reality?

For me, as a white, middle class, well-educated Presbyterian, the functions of the law as a guarantor of my safety and well being are very solid.  I have nothing to fear from the law unless I start driving like a moron or decide to cheat on my income taxes.  That is not true for everyone in our society, and one group for whom that has not historically been true are LGBT people, it is also not true for black, brown and Native American people.  I should do everything I can to remedy these situations, before I ever start to worry about whether or not the authority is going to turn on me.  The authority is me, and unlike Jesus or Paul, I have a voice and vote and say in what the authority does or does not do.

The realization that sort of clicked my "justice monitor" over from watching what sinners were suddenly "getting away with," to seeing LGBT people as an oppressed minority is the considerable pain and suffering of people in that community.  The fact that the majority of homeless teenagers in this country are homeless because they "came out" of the closet and got "kicked out" of their family.  The fact that people who have been living in committed relationship for 40 years could not share medical benefits or have family privileges at hospitals.  The fact that people have been told that something fundamental to their very being is an abomination by those who then turn and claim to represent a loving and beneficent Creator.

I guess I just started to define where the sin was a little differently.

For a while I had the law of the land, the law of my church, and the broad acceptance of my own orientation by society at large to hide behind.  I am thankful for those protections, because they allowed me to listen and understand what the Law and Spirit of God were saying to me.  Being safe allowed me to encounter a Jesus who does not condemn an adulterous woman and who challenged me to put down my stones. Christ did not condemn me for not being brave and getting out in front in the vanguard. I was allowed to stay very comfortably stay in the rear with the gear.

Now, I'm not persecuted by the change in the law, I am challenged to live into the new door to freedom that the law has opened for people who had been shut out.  I am glad to live in a time and a place where instead of tightening the bonds of the status quo, the law is loosing justice and equality.

I just hope in the future I will not be so stubborn and slow to see it happening.

Heresy and Apostasy

Not even if he had them by the neck, I vow

Would e'er these people scent the Devil

-Goethe, Faust

I may have done this before, if so please pardon me for repeating myself.
Heresy is false doctrine, it is something that is theologically wrong.  It is defined solely in contrast to the accepted doctrine and theology of a group of people.  While it is generally applied to religious beliefs, you could also apply the label to other fields where there is a commonly accepted group of principles.  You can therefore have a heretical scientist, who eschews the scientific method for something that more closely resembles sorcery (think Frankenstein).  In fact, as I think about it, the modern character of the mad scientist, is in fact nothing more than a modern or postmodern rendering of the heretic.
Apostasy, on the other hand, is not the same thing, though they are sometimes lumped into the same soup.  Apostasy is the rejection of the values and the practices of a system, an apostate is someone who once subscribed or belonged to a group, but has chosen to no longer do so, or has been cast out (possibly due to views that could be considered heresy, but more likely over some ethical dissent).
On the other side of the balance, you have orthodoxy, which is defined as "right" belief or practice.  There are Orthodox Jews and there is he Eastern Orthodox Church, there are even Orthodox Presbyterians, but notice the capitalization, those are names, chosen for themselves, not descriptions.  True orthodoxy is a much broader stream, and history has shown us that many within the stream of orthodoxy consider others, also within the bounds of orthodoxy, to be heretical.  There are things that I believe as protestant that the Roman Catholic Church considers both heretical and apostate, and therefore un-orthodox.  There are things that I believe and support as a Presbyterian that many in other protestant traditions consider apostasy, there are things that I, as an individual believer hold in my heart that are probably heretical to my own tradition (for instance I'm sort of glib about the whole predestination thing, but that's another article).
I also admit that there are things I see other people holding to that I would certainly label heretical: dispensational eschatology, the prosperity Gospel, and I have big problems with the apostasy of many who call themselves Christians, but make no effort to live in a Christ-centered way.  I am pretty ready to question the convictions of those who disagree with me about social issues, and who call me heretical or apostate, and shoot the same words right back at them, because, "OOH I HATE THEM VARMINTS!!"
And that's where I realize that the Devil has got me by the neck.  Within the church we love to lob various verses from Paul's letters to Timothy back and forth at each other, things about itching ears and false teachers and God breathed scriptures.  But when you sort of step back and read the whole two letters, you will notice that what Paul is doing is telling Timothy to stay the heck out of all that mud slinging, don't hate them, don't fear them, just don't get involved with it, because it's futile.  Hold on to what you have been taught and what the Spirit is doing in you and through you, don't get pulled into the wrangling about heresy and apostasy and orthodoxy, because they're all going to distract you from the Good News.
It's funny, sort of, that Paul's one-liners are so often taken out of that context and made to engage "the enemy" on the very ground that he was exhorting his young protege to avoid.  Seriously, Paul's message to Timothy in both letters: "haters gonna hate, shake it off."  Yep, there's that Taylor Swift song again... hanging my head a little bit, but darn if that isn't good advice.
I believe that the Devil, or whatever you want to call the adversary of God, has really mastered using human beings as the primary weapon in the war of chaos against creativity.  So much so that perhaps our somewhat medieval notions of some sort of monstrous demon are outmoded to the point of being dangerous.  When our desire for truth can be so easily turned into a crusade against other versions of the truth, when our desire to live righteous lives can turn so quickly into persecution of those who live differently than we do... well I think  you know who wins.

You Go Girls!

The US Women's National Soccer Team won their third World Cup last night.  They looked absolutely dominant against Japan, which is something that no US Soccer team could really claim to be at such a high level.  Which is sort of odd, given the fact that, even though Soccer is far from the most popular sport in this country, we certainly have a leg up on most of the world in terms of total dedication and perhaps even obsession with athletes and sports.
The men's national team has never managed to ascend to the heights that the women have occupied over the past two decades, because what most of the world calls football is only just catching on here.  What we are exporting on the other hand is so much more important that I almost can't help getting a little star-spangled when I even think about it.  What we are exporting is the notion that women are strong and capable and able to do great things.  The skill and the speed of the women's game is not a step down from the men's game, the game is not popular because of the clothes they wear (thank God Sepp Blatter didn't get his way), the game is popular for the same reason futbol is popular all over the world, because it is global.
On my recent trip to Spain, I had the opportunity to watch some La Liga games in Spanish bars with Spanish crowds.  I watched Real Madrid lose to Juventus (an Italian team) in the semifinal game of the European Championship and I was on the edge of my seat with the rest of the crowd.  I saw the FC Barcelona Jerseys start to appear when they won the championship a week later.  I have seen kids in Guatemala playing soccer on a dirt field with a volleyball covered in duct tape.  I know the power that this game has beyond our borders.
And so, I may be putting a lot on the shoulders of Carly Lloyd and her teammates but I am so very happy that they are representing the notion that girls and women ought to be allowed to do the same things that the boys do and that they should be given an arena to achieve the ultimate goal.  They should be honored for the merit of their achievement and not have it overshadowed by the male version (in our country they can't be, and probably won't be for a while).
They may be representing our nation, and that's all good and fine, but more importantly they are representing women from around the world who are not allowed to play games (or even show their ankles).  Their victory shows the world, that while we may have our difficulties, we are miles ahead of the world in the way we empower our women and girls.  What I saw last night was not just "good for a girl" it was good, period.  That needs to get out there.
It needs to get out there because the world is a dark an brutal place for a lot of women who do not have the good fortune to be born in a place where they are considered (at least in the eyes of the law) as equal to men.  We have our issues, before Title IX, women's athletics were the backwater and the afterthought of varsity athletics.  It took a sweeping and sometimes controversial edict from the top to change that, slowly.  We still struggle for income equality between men and women, but it is at least a known issue.
That's the crux of the issue: in America, women are pushing for that last bit of equality that allows them to stand shoulder to shoulder in full sunlight with men.  In much of the world women are still trying to glimpse the daylight from under the shadow of patriarchal systems and seemingly insurmountable oppression.
The beautiful game can reach those places.  It can plant a seed, an idea, a glimmer of hope.
We are growing to appreciate the world's game more and more.  It's only fair that we give them something back, let's give them the notion that women are strong, and fast, and powerful, that they're not property to be hidden in the dark, they are fully able to stand in the light.

O-Fence

The interweb is great for two things: pictures of kittens and offending people, oh yeah and then making jokes about how easily people get offended, so I guess that sort of makes three things.
What I would like to do here is take a break from judging people who are offended by one thing or another and examine why it is that people seem so quick to get their nose out of joint these days.  Have we become more sensitive?  I don't think so, back in the day, people certainly did moral outrage about a lot of things.  I mean, at one point, a bunch of angry teetotalers managed to get the US government to outlaw alcohol.  It didn't go so well, but for one shining moment, outrage won the day.
Fortunately, with the proliferation of outrage and offense taking, the really dangerous sort of shrill humbuggery (which really ought to be declared an abomination somewhere in Leviticus), is far too diffuse, and those afflicted with it cannot be bothered to actually organize or do much of anything beyond re-posting things on facebook and twitter, or maybe, if they're really outraged, writing a hasty and poorly thought through blog (sort of like this).
No, the butt-hurt masses and all their impotent outrage are likely to be balanced out in the end by people who are offended by the same thing, but in the opposite direction.  Maybe that's the real genius of the internet: when everyone is able to express their opinion it all comes out in the wash.  Thoughtful commentary and moronic fear mongering are all out there for you to choose from, but choose wisely or else you're just going to join the ranks of the offended.
Let's be honest, human beings really aren't at their best when they're annoyed.  We don't think straight and we tend to revert back to our least nuanced comfort zones.  Example: you're on a road trip with the family.  The kids are bickering in the back seat, you're stuck in traffic and you're about an hour and half from home.  One kid whines, "I'm hungry and I have to go pee."  You see a McDonalds is coming up in about two miles, you know stopping at McDonalds is probably best for all involved, you can stretch your legs and consume some fat and salt, which, while it doesn't do great things for your overall health, will certainly make you feel better, it will allow whiny kid to go pee, and all involved to proceed with adequate blood sugar levels, it may even help you wait out some of the traffic.  If you are sufficiently objective, you will clearly see that this is the right course of action.  If you are annoyed and impatient though, you will not, you will think only about getting home, pushing through, buckling down, fighting harder, and you will invariably condemn yourself and your family to a very unpleasant final leg of the journey and possibly precipitate a melt down from one or more members of your clan.
This is not an advertisement for McDonalds, it's a parable about how being angry and offended impairs your judgment.  The internet is a huge traffic jam.  People of all sorts are out there some are clever, some are stupid, some you may agree with, some you may not, if you're lucky there are enough pictures of kittens to sort of balance out the day.
At it's best, you might actually get to roll down the window and have a decent conversation with someone along side, at it's worst, someone gets out and starts beating others up with a tire iron.
Sometimes people get a little carried away with a metaphor, so I'm going to get to the point.
Being offended is not usually a good place to start with constructive conversation or action, it may be the impetus for something that becomes a cause for action, but your gut feeling (which is usually what ends up on facebook and twitter) is not really sufficiently thought through and will most likely just add to the soup of hurt feelings and bunched up undergarments.
Take a deep breath, stretch your legs, have a cheeseburger (or similarly comforting vegetarian alternative, if there is one, actually, if there is let me know because I could really stand to cut back on the cheeseburgers).  Do us all a favor, just don't press post or tweet or publish until you've really thought things through, there's enough outrage out there already.

In Summary...

I'm going to say this once last time: I believe the Bible is actually a "Good Book."
Not everything in the Bible is absolutely true in a historical sense.
Not everything in the Bible is morally correct.
Not everything in the Bible is clear and inerrant.
The Bible is not a science text book.
The Bible is not "life's instruction manual."
The Bible is a collection of writings assembled by a community of human beings who felt connected in a covenant bond to the One God, the Creator.  This God got involved in the human story through people like Abram, and Jacob and David.  The people were given rules to help them navigate the complicated often confusing waters of human social existence.  Those rules were neatly organized into ten "Big" rules and interpreted by the community, through trial and error, into over 600 separate statutes.  Conventional wisdom was that if people followed these rules, God would bless them, if they did not God would curse them, but to tell you the truth that equation was a little iffy.
The rain always seemed to fall on the just and the unjust alike.
And man, were there questions about what happens east of Eden.
What about Ishmael?
What about Canaan?
What about all the people who were killed and dispossessed so that God could keep a promise?
Why does David want what isn't his?
How can such a broken man sing such beautiful songs?
What's with all the idols?  Is God really doing everything he can?
The story gets really complicated, and the questions never stop.
Exile?  Really?  Is that the end?
Restoration!  Will things finally be better?
Rinse, lather, repeat.
It's a beautiful story, it's a horrific story, it's filled with heaven and it's filled with blood and fire.
People sing praises, and people weep in bitter lament, and God is in it all, in the whirlwind and the still small voice of silence.
The questions never end.  People wonder, "what is truth?"
Jesus of Nazareth, born of the house and lineage of David, rooted in the people of the covenant and the stories of Israel.  Raised to read and live the Scripture, born to be the answer, but not the answer that most people wanted.  His answers to all the questions were so terribly simple, and so horribly impossible: love and forgive, forgive and love.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
More questions:
Why didn't he pick better disciples?
Why do bad things still happen?
Why do we still have all these questions?
Why aren't things simple and easy now?
Why can't we just figure everything out once and for all?
Isn't Jesus the way, and the truth and the life?
Shouldn't that solve all this mess for us?
Why does God so insistently let us muck about and make such a mess of things?
Surely there's a better plan.
Better than what?
Better than grace?
Really, you think you can beat grace?
Good luck with that.