Need to Know

My name is Mark, and I'm an ESPN addict.  I turn Sportscenter on in the morning when I'm eating breakfast and drinking coffee, I turn it on in the afternoon while I'm making dinner for Around the Horn and PTI.  My wife laughs at me because I will sometimes sit through the same story twice, and then I kind of have to admit that I'm not actually paying that much attention to it, it's just on in the background, because I kind of feel comforted, and very sporadically interested in what's going on.  I mean some of the stuff is interesting, and the highlights are cool, but I could really care less if he Milwaukee Brewers just signed their shortstop to a contract worth more money than I will ever even see in my lifetime.
I would like to tell you that, as a practitioner of organized religion, I'm just studying the competition, but the cold fact of it is, I'm probably as soothed and comforted by listening to muscled men and surly coaches mumble platitudes to grovelling reporters as any Joe Football Fan out there.
And then came Marshawn Lynch, an Isrealite in whom there is no deceit.  Lynch is the running back for the Super Bowl Champion and two time NFC Champion Seattle Seahawks.  He is by all accounts, a really great teammate and he is an absolutely phenomenal athlete, but Marshawn doesn't like to talk to reporters, and Marshawn has never liked to talk to reporters, and Marshawn has been fined by the No Fun League on several occasions for not talking to reporters.  Depending on who you are, Marshawn's defiance of the NFLs media policy, either rubs you the wrong way or it makes you like the big guy even more.
It's his job to play football, and of course, if you want to get paid millions of dollars to play a game, you need to recognize that TV is the big reason why that's a possibility.  Before TV, football players had to have regular jobs during the week.  But there are plenty of guys who will do just about anything to get themselves on the screen, like Richard Sherman, who is articulate and funny and not at all shy, who can give us out there in TV land something to talk about.
Then you have others, like Bill Belichick who will stand in front of reporters for the required interval, but actually not say anything.  This is the large majority of player and coach interview content: "yeah, we're doing our best, yeah we just need to focus, yeah it's going to be a tough game, yeah we need to put the past behind us....blah, blah, blah."
And this is why I appreciate what Marshawn is up to this week.  He shows up for his required media time and says nothing but, "I'm just here so I won't get fined," and the next day, "You all know why I'm here."  In response to every question.  And to be honest he tells me every bit as much about the drama of sports as many of the more sincere, but quite frankly dull, interviewees.
He's shining a light, and I suspect it may be at least a bit consciously, on the theater of the absurd that major sports have become in this country.  He clearly thinks that his job is to carry a football down the field, to run over defenders and help his team win, and all of the other stuff is ancillary and unnecessary trappings of becoming a public figure, which he has little desire to do.
Some people thought Marshawn was somehow disabled at first, that he was painfully shy or had some expression of autism, but it turns out, that's not really the case, he is able to speak and even appear in commercials that mock his stoic media persona.  It turns out that he just finds the questions that reporters ask to be stupid and empty and a waste of time, and let's face it journalism in general is kind of on a low ebb, thanks in large part to the nature of the television medium and the evolution of an audience that craves soundbites and disdains nuance.
I'm inclined to see Marshawn Lynch as social commentary.  The fact that he probably doesn't want that is actually part of the point.  Our culture fixates on heroes and extraordinary feats, which leads us inevitably to idolatry.  Heck, we even flat out call these top athletes of ours idols and icons.  It actually does my heart good to see one of them resist the machine that wants to make him into golden calf.  It's as much his defiance of the system, which has proven to be a bit corrupt of late, as it is his calm but comical methodology that makes me want to cheer for Marshawn.
I need to cheer for something, I mean, it's the Seahawks versus the Patriots in the Superbowl.  I think Marshawn versus the NFL and their Media hordes is much more compelling.

Guilt Trip

I heard a story on the radio this morning about a family in India who were the first in their village to own a refrigerator.  You heard me right a refrigerator.  The man of the house said he had saved a little money for 10, count em 10 years, to get a refrigerator, so that he could free his wife from the constant grind of always having to shop every day and make everything fresh.
To tell you the truth, I never really think much about my refrigerator, unless it's broken.  In fact, I have two refrigerators, one in the basement that's mostly empty unless we just stocked up on groceries, or are having a big gathering.  Sure it's a pretty major investment as far as household items go, but I was still boggled by the idea that the purchase and delivery of an appliance would be the life-altering, village-celebrating, event that it apparently was for this family and their neighbors.
Then I began to feel really spoiled.
It was one of those count-your-blessings-check-your-privilege moments, and I didn't need any self-righteous politically correct type to prompt me into it.
I thought of all the things that I consider disposable, which would be momentous acquisitions in much of the world: cars, refrigerators, a good well that supplies clean water.  And I thought of the fact that this Indian man and his family probably work, in the average day, a whole lot harder than I do.  And I have a hard time reconciling how this is justice.  I was born into this hyper-consumptive world, where the reality is that new is often cheaper and more "sensible" than repaired.  Likewise, some people are born into a world where "getting ahead" means you get to have cold water in the summer time, can actually store your leftover curried chicken.
You could hear the excitement from both the man and his wife about... leftovers.
I also noted, in the story, that the whole village was happy about the arrival of a refrigerator, it was going to lift all the boats, so to speak.  And this is one of the enviable aspects of poverty and hardship (yes I know, it's a stretch); community.  People help each other, because they have to.  They don't have to like each other or agree about everything, but they do have to help each other, it's survival.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the human need for connection, and the reasons why the church is foundering in Western Society, and I think it has something to do with the fact that we can all too easily do things for ourselves.  People who live without the luxury and comfort of disposable income must rely on one another when times get rough.  You hear stories about this from old time rural folk all the time, how when a barn burns down the community rallies to build a new one and temporary measures are taken to help out the downtrodden, because next month or next year it might happen to you and then the favor comes back around.
The impact of individualism is far reaching, and in most cases corrosive.  Not-my-problem syndrome infects everything from how we invest in our children's education to how we treat our aging mothers and fathers.
All of the sudden, I didn't feel quite so bad for the poor people in India and Africa, and other places where everyone is pretty much in the same boat.  But I felt worse for the poor people who live in the consumptive disposable world.  We have kicked away all of the communal support mechanisms (the ones that actually worked) and replaced them with a welfare check, some food stamps and a handful of overwhelmed government agencies and said: "Good luck, work hard and you'll get ahead."
Once upon a time, I thought that enough good people being charitable could actually solve this problem, but I don't think that's true any longer.  We need to reforge our connections to one another.  We need to be held together by more than just tax-paying.
This could, and should, happen in churches, but I think we may have drunk the self-sufficiency Kool-Aid along with everyone else.  Why are people consumers and spectators of our religious services and "performances" instead of fellow disciples?  Why is it hard to get a commitment? Why do people float away from our communities so easily?
Because they sense somewhere deep down that we don't really need them.
And so they don't really need us.
As so many things do, this reminds me of the Beatitudes, those peculiar statements where Jesus said people were blessed, when intuitively they didn't seem to be: blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit, etc.  Maybe that Indian family who just got the first refrigerator in the village really are as blessed as they sounded.

Paradigm Shifting

Yesterday, I saw this, honestly it has taken me about a day to sort of process what I just read.  I needed to process the facts, as well as the feelings.  For those of you familiar with the Myers-Briggs typology, I'm an INT(J or P change depending on mood when I take the test), which means that I am rather set on processing information (T) in a rational manner, but I prefer to gather information intuitively, which means, yes I'm a bit of a paradox (aren't we all?).
I like that there were studies done on this perspective of addiction, I like that there is "real world" evidence that this is true, because, as someone who has had some experience with drugs and addiction, I certainly intuit all of this to be true... and important.
If you didn't feel like taking the time to read the article, here's what it says: addiction is more about emotional state than about chemistry.  Now this is not to say that there is not chemical component, but technically every addiction tracks back to dopamine, our body's Dr. Feelgood.  Opiates mimic dopamine in a way that leads to an unrealistic level of pleasure response and pain elimination.   Cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, marijuana (THC), and yes even my good friend caffeine stimulate our body's natural production of dopamine, and make you feel good, at least at first.  But our bodies are stasis seekers, and a dopamine induced euphoria is not a sustainable state of being, so without chemical prodding our dopamine levels fall.  Gambling, skydiving and pretty much anything that gives you a stimulating rush of adrenaline also increases your body's production of dopamine to sort of counteract the "rush" of adrenaline as your body seeks stasis again.
The biology and chemistry of addiction is fairly well understood, but unfortunately understanding and even short circuiting the chemistry doesn't actually solve the problem.  The lord of methadone knows we've tried.  My brother had several very expensive metal pellets surgically implanted in his arm which essentially blocked him from experiencing the high of heroin use, they worked.  They chemically interfered with the opiate's ability to get him high, without that high, there really isn't much of a perk beyond the physical act of sticking the needle in (which also a thing that only those rather intimately acquainted with IV drug use, and cutters will ever know about.  See Velvet Underground's song Heroin: "Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man, when I put a spike into my vein").
The really world shaking part of the above article, is the shift in perspective and the gathered evidence about addiction, which tells us that it needs to be treated as more than chemical dependency.  Isolation is what leads to addiction.  Which pops up so many truth flags its really rather disturbing.  Speaking personally, why did I smoke cigarettes?  Was it because I liked the way it made me feel?  No way, at least not at first, at first it gave me a headache and made me dizzy and tasted like death.  I discovered that people hung out in small groups to smoke.  I hate big pulsing roomfuls of people trying to shout small talk at each other (pretty much a description of most of my Freshman year at Penn State).  I liked getting outside in the cool air and meeting a few people who you can talk to without yelling, sometimes there were even girls out there.  By virtue of smoking I could automatically join their group, no questions asked.  Sure it was bad for me, sure it formed a chemical dependency, but it also helped me feel less lonely, it also helped me meet people I could actually be friends with.
Later, when I was out of college, smoking didn't seem to offer the same regular benefit, relationship-wise, and actually, I found it rather easy to quit, largely because I had started to form deeper relationships, with Michele for one, but also out there in life.
See here's what most people don't tell you about drugs: they're cool, at least at first.  They make you feel good, you do them in social situations, you share an illicit and therefore exciting secret with a few people, in other words, they offer not only a good "high" feeling, but also a sense of belonging, of being part of the "scene."  According to the article above, drug use begins as balm for loneliness or isolation, which in my experience is a painful truth.
It also explains why 12 step programs are about the only thing that work in combatting addiction: cultish insistence on connection, to the program, to a higher power, to working the steps, but more basically to the group of people who share your struggle.  The fact that you probably started using whatever substance you used or whatever behavior (sex, gambling etc.) gave you that rush was because you wanted to be part of something, damn the torpedoes if it wasn't healthy, being alone is painful.
Why are 12 steps programs proliferating while churches are dying?  Because they offer connection, real connection, and apparently churches are somehow failing to do that, which is a crying shame don't you think?
The article points out that the way we have dealt with addictions has been totally and abjectly wrong on a societal level: we shun, we incarcerate, we marginalize people with addictions, we treat them as though they're lepers, and in doing so we make the problem that drove them to the addiction worse.
Churches have been every bit as guilty of this as the society at large, other than hosting various 12 step meetings, we would rather not talk about addictions in church, they're just sordid stuff.
But sin is sordid isn't it?  Aren't addictions just another example of how we can twist God's good creation?  I mean think about all those things: adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine, which are involved in the chemistry of addiction, aren't they part of our bodies and our minds for a reason?
We are made for relationship and connection and when we don't fulfill that need, we get broken really quickly.  The idea that we should be above this sort of thing is absolutely wrong.  We subconsciously tell people: you're welcome as long as your sin is under control, we love you as long as you act lovable.  Where 12 steps have succeeded is in telling people that they're welcome and that they have a place no matter what, even if they're stoned, even if they're in active DTs, even if their lives are falling apart at the seams, they are welcomed and encouraged to come, no matter what.
Isn't that what church should be like too?

It's Getting Real Up in Here

The plane tickets are purchased.  With fear and trembling, I booked two tickets, on a non stop flight from Philadelphia to Madrid, on April 8, 2015, and the return on May 20.  Up until now, the impending pilgrimage was a dream, now there's an actual document, now there's a departure hour.
I would like to tell you that I am all in on this one, I would like to tell you that I'm yearning to get out there on the Way, but the truth is, I've got the fear.  I've got the fear that something's going to go wrong, I've got the fear about leaving Michele and the kids for over a month.  You name it, I'm probably worrying about it.  It's a big thing, this trip.  I have been feeling my empathetic connection with Hobbits rather strongly of late, and so I guess that the purchase of tickets is like Bilbo signing that contract with the Dwarves bound for Eriabor.
As much as it's been fun to plan and buy gear, and more gear, as much as I am actually looking for the purpose and simplicity of walking, there's a part of me that would just as soon stay in the Shire (or in my case Southern Maryland).
But this is an adventure I need to take.
I have been battling the desire for control of this adventure a little too much.  That's what worry usually amounts to: fretting about things you can not (and sometimes should not) control.  Anxiety becomes a way of life... and it's not a good one.
Probably since the first time I read Tolkien, the prospect of taking a step out of my front door and just going, walking, driving, riding, whatever, has always fascinated me, but without some sort of inducement, it's not a thing that people do very much.  After all, one knows there will be privations of various sorts, blisters and sunburns, drenching rains and stinging winds, uncertain access to facilities, and numerous invasions of the personal cushion we have become so used to in the modern world.  I'm wondering about silly things, like what it will be to go a month without Sportscenter and being able to Google something at will.  I'm wondering what it will be like to be a homeless wanderer in a foreign land, missing my wife and children.  I'm wondering what it will be like to challenge my body, day after day, and to have my body change in response.  On my four day trip last year my calves bulged out to 1.5 times their normal diameter, they were huge and as hard as a rock, this is a long enough journey that other changes (hopefully for the better) will occur physically.  Also on my four day trip last year, and on my Appalachian Trail hike with Jack last summer, I suffered from dehydration.  On my return from Santiago in 2013, this led to a kidney infection as the result of an obstruction in the bile duct, aka a stuck kidney stone.
It wasn't a very good welcome home present.
But still, this is an adventure I need to take, because I spend too much time sitting here in front of a computer screen, because I think I need to let go of some of this anxiety, because I need to get on the way, and embrace a simpler way.
I felt, when I came home in 2013, that I had unfinished business with the Camino, I had just sort of dipped my foot in the pool, even though I got my compostela, I was not really done.  I may not really be done on May 20.  I'm getting the sense that this sort of journey could become a way of life, actually I'm hoping that it does.  Because in all this, for all the things I worry about, at least the worries are as real and plausible as can be.
Say what you want about it, but at least I know what I fear, and that's a pretty good first step.
When I come back I will be done with the Way of St. James for a while, but I'm going to have other journeys to take, journeys that are probably more dangerous and more important.
But first, this is an adventure I need to take.

We Could Be Heroes?

Over the long weekend, I have read several interweb articles about the new movie American Sniper.  I  have read a few lamenting the fact that we make people who kill people into heroes, I have read rebuttals of that, and I think where I come down on the whole thing is: "come on people it's a movie."
First of all, I have not seen the movie, but I have seen movies about war before.  In fact, three of my favorite movies of all time (Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and Platoon) are war movies and I am of the opinion that some of the most powerful human drama and therefore some of the most important stories surround war.  One does not come out of a really good war movie thinking: "Man that seemed like fun."  Having only seen the trailer for American Sniper, I can be pretty certain that this one is no exception.  There are moments in the trailer that feel like a gut punch, particularly where he's sighting in on an Iraqi kid who is maybe 10, who has just been handed a bomb by his mother, and the sniper is flashing mentally through thoughts of his family and his own child, and that's just absolutely gut wrenching, even in a commercial.
I'm pretty certain this isn't a shoot 'em up romp about how heroic war turns out to be.  If you want that though, you know there's always any of The Expendables, movies.
What this comes down to is the actual purpose of storytelling.  Should all stories be neat and clean and safe?  I think not.  I don't know if American Sniper is going to make it on my list of favorite movies, the way life is right now, I won't find out for about eight or nine months, but let me say that telling a good story, a powerful story, even if that story is a little hard-edged, is worth it.
One of the things the Bible has to teach us is that heroes don't have to be heroic in the same sense that mythological characters need to be: Abraham does not have to roll the same way Achilles rolls, David is not Odysseus, and even Sampson has way more weaknesses than Hercules.  Perfect heroes are mythological.  Over the years even Superman had to have some weaknesses (even going so far as getting killed at one point).  Without weaknesses there is no drama, and stories with no drama really only appeal to small children.  Television has perhaps lulled us too much too sleep, most popular shows follow the formula where a crisis (in the case of drama) or a mis-communication (in the case of a comedy) creates some tension which is then resolved by the end of the show.  Most of the time you know that somehow, by the end of the show, everything will all be back to normal.  Only the best and the worst shows leave you hanging.  That's the funny thing about it, if it's good, it leaves you with a pit in your guts that makes you think and challenges you.  If it's bad there's a pit too, but the pit is of a different character, it's un-constructive confusion and bafflement.  Things that don't make sense, but for all the wrong reasons, characters that have not played well their hour upon the stage.
In other words, bad stories tend to be the most like real life.  Good stories place all of that in a context that makes some sense.
That means we tweak a soldier, who serves his country and does his duty, but who is ultimately a tool of violence, into a hero or a villain depending on the story we want to tell.  In absolute reality there are no heroes or villains, there are only flawed human beings doing what they do.  Only the best stories are able to capture this ambiguity and not utterly confuse the audience, and there is a fine balance to be had.  It is much easier to create characters who are blunt instruments and paint from an unmixed palette, that's what most movies do.  Those movies do not offend, or challenge, or move anyone to very much of anything.
That's why, whenever I hear that a movie is creating some stir or offending some group or other I generally want to see it.  Even, and perhaps especially, if I think I may be offended as well.
This is far from fool-proof however.  For instance, Showgirls was super controversial, but it was one of the absolute worst movies of all time.  Maybe being controversial because of the amount of nudity is the exception, because after all, nakedness does not necessarily correspond to good storytelling (in fact there may be an inverse correlation).
I guess it boils down to the question of what is offensive.  Is it the premise?  Because maybe that means it's a button that needs pushed.  Is it the execution?  Because it's never a good idea to give a hammer to a baby.
What I know about Clint Eastwood, the director of American Sniper, is that he's no fool when it comes to story telling (incidents with empty chairs aside).  He has managed to tell some pretty powerful and gritty stories: Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Grand Torino.  I suspect he will help us learn a little bit more about our human predicament, even if it does feel a little like a gut punch.  I'll let you know when it comes out on cable.

I Have a Dream

The kids have a snow day today, a two hour early dismissal tomorrow, and the next two Mondays off, so much for any sort of regular schedule this month.  I told them that they had Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr. day, and she said, "I love that guy!"  And it wasn't just because she gets next Monday off either.  The man has been practically canonized by America.  And mostly, he deserved the laud and honor that he gets, but I wonder if Martin would have been really comfortable with it.
Sometimes I think we make him our civil rights mascot and use our collective love and admiration of him as a mask for some of the flaws in our character that remain not so carefully hidden.  He's a super hero, and because of his assassination, a martyr.  And often you lose the ability to clearly see the man behind a martyrdom, we even do it with Jesus, why would MLK (or JFK or RFK for that matter) be any different.
He was a man who had a dream, a vision actually, and it was a good one, but his dream was not without detractors.  Some, most famously Malcolm X, thought that King's insistence on non-violence was holding back the change that needed to happen "by any means necessary."  And we love us some non-violence, but we sometimes confuse non-violence for patience and inaction.  King went to jail for his activity, and was vilified by defenders of the status quo.  In other words, he did stuff, some of it unpopular, some of it not extreme enough in the eyes of many, but he did something.
In an arena (civil rights) where there is a lot of talk, and generally not much action, sometimes any action can seem like a quantum leap.  We love heroes in this country, but we also love to chop them off at the knees.  In an ironic twist, James Earl Ray may have done the greatest service to King's legacy by killing him.  At the height of his prophetic voice, before compromises or human failings could really lay him low, a bullet actually made him immortal.
Every once in a while the voice of hater pops up and mentions that he may not have been as perfect as he seemed, but they cannot really touch him, not really.  Now what we think of when we think of MLK is that voice echoing out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, now what we think of is a letter from Birmingham Jail, his is a face forever set before our children as the face of justice and equality.
That's all good and fine.  But actual justice and equality have eluded us for far too long.  The fact that King is still the primary person people think of when you talk about Civil Rights (followed probably by Abraham Lincoln, which is even more depressing).  It means that since 1968, no one has stepped up and taken the reigns of the movement, and it's left to people of dubious reputation like Al Sharpton.  People like Jesse Jackson, who stepped out for a minute into the bright lights of King's Legacy, get pretty much beat down and ridiculed.  In the long run it seems that no one is fit to wear the hero's robes.
Because this is not a problem to be solved by a super hero, it's a problem to be solved by ordinary people who have the courage to stand up and say, "I have a dream."  We need to stop waiting for someone to rise up and become the cult of personality that we think we want, and simply get busy and changing our own hearts and minds with regard to racial justice and human dignity.
And we should not allow ourselves the illusion that MLK was the end of the struggle.  He acknowledged in his prescient, "I have seen the promised land," speech that he was not going to "get there." (delivered in Memphis, April 3, 1968, King was shot April 4, 1968)  He compared himself to Moses, who could lead the people to the brink and point the way to justice and equality, but was not going to get to walk across the Jordan.
There has been no Joshua.
And even though we celebrate him with a day off, we're a long way from honoring his legacy.

And Now, Back to the Outrage

The news coming out of Europe is bad indeed.  I'm getting this strong feeling that much of the world is now joining the United States in getting absolutely fed up with terrorists.  Why now? Why not a decade ago?  Why did it take so long?

I don't rightly know.

Maybe it's just that terrorism, in most cases, simply fits the "not my problem" category.  After all, even 9-11, as much as it shocked our nation and effected the course of our world for the past 14 years, was still just a "so sad for you," kind of moment.  The French are wondering right now if the rest of the world really understands what they're going through.  I have heard impassioned pleas from Nigerians for help in dealing with Boko Haram, but even their own government seems to think that the thing can be contained.

Maybe it's that all too familiar bugaboo: failure of empathy.

Maybe we really will put up with far too much as long as it doesn't directly effect us.

Maybe this has gotten to a point where so many people have lost their innocence in this regard, that there is going to be a reprisal.  That's the dark undertone one might hear if you listen hard, even from among Muslims, there's this sense that the terrorists have gone too far.  There seems like there just might be a truly brutal clamp down coming, or the sort that bends even the most noble intentions into vengeance.

There was this movie from a while back called Starship Troopers, it was the story of what happened when earth was attacked by a race of giant insects from some planet far away.  The bugs are terrifying, really terrifying, and all of humanity finally unites in their quest to defend Earth against the menace.  You see all races and creeds working together to fight the bugs.  In the course of the movie, you get the gist that the director is making a point about our inhumanity when we get scared, we get violent.  You could very easily see the bugs as evil and once you do that, pretty much anything is fair game, any kind of violence, torture or genocide.

The question asked by the movie, which is otherwise not a very good movie, is also asked by the more recent Ender's Game, do the ends justify the means?

Will it really advance the collective glory of our species if we rise up as a global community and curb stomp the terrorists?

It would certainly make me feel better, for a second.

The problem is that I suspect a new evil would rise: remember how we "defeated" communism, we actually did so with fairly non-violent means (though we had the constant threat of mutual annihilation all the while).  But when Communism was gone, we were left with the twisted offspring of the cold war, and they turned on us.

We trained the Mujahadeen to fight the Soviets, and the Mujahadeen became the Taliban.  Osama Bin Laden cut his teeth fighting for Afghanistan, and when that was done he turned his sights on the next great Satan... that would be us.

Boko Haram, ISIS, the Taliban, they all need to be stopped, they're twisted and violent, they're the next incarnation of the hatred and fear that has driven the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, but how they are stopped is important.  The superhero approach is not going to work.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the world is fed up with this sort of nonsense, Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Atheist, we're all freaking tired of the mess.

But how do we clean it up without making a bigger mess?

How do we wade into the quagmire without getting stuck?

It's pretty clear that we need to get the bad guys, but can we do it without becoming bad guys?

A Typology: Part X

The Emergents
Ten entries is more than enough, although I could go on teasing out distinctions, I think it's about time to wrap it up.  I'm going to wrap it up with a little bit about a group that has certainly gotten a lot of press relative to their actual numbers, and a group that I am frankly about as conflicted about as any other on the list (though you might sense that I have some mixed emotions about most of them).
I have mixed emotions about the Emergents because I like so much about what they do.  When I first read Brian Mclaren's A Generous Orthodoxy, it was sort of a world changer for me, at least conceptually. I loved the idea of being post-everything.  I wanted to simply toss a grenade over my shoulder and walk away from everything that annoyed or hurt me about the church, with the slow motion, action movie fireball walk.  It certainly wasn't that I wanted to be done with Jesus, I just wanted to be done with all the frustrating things about his Body.  I was ready to sign up for the Emergent experience.
Except I served a little church in a small town in Western Pennsylvania, and even though I could get a little frustrated with them, I freaking loved them, and they were not emergent, and they were never going to be emergent.  I compare it to coffee.  Many of the established churches are like Maxwell House, solid, familiar, decent enough that they don't taste like somebody burnt dog hair in the process of making them.  I may like my fair-trade, do-gooder coffee from Rwanda (totally the Emergent church thing), but I understand why my little Church in Plumville just wanted to keep their Maxwell House.
This is actually more than just a metaphor, the Emergent church has some great ideas, and inasmuch as they bring those ideas to the larger body, I'm all for it.  What I have become increasingly frustrated with is people who form their little cliques and decide to purify what they see as good.  This is consumerism, this in country club church, this is the protestant reformation's worst legacy and probable nadir.
From a certain perspective, that's what the Emergent church is about: picking and choosing doctrine and practices (you can't really call them disciplines because they're just cherry picked), they meet dressed in jeans and sneakers in a coffee house somewhere and sing old songs, new songs whatever songs the community seems to grok.  They're young, they're hip, they don't have any folks from the way things always were telling them that the music is too loud, or that they don't like the pattern on the comfy couches, they've got the good of church without all the baggage.
I'm more than a little jealous.
But I know my part in this church includes all of those people who are baggage, and who have baggage.  It's not healthy for me to judge them.  It's not healthy for me to hold on to all the ways they can hurt me and others.  It's my job to forgive them, and love them.  That's what being the church is actually about: loving others as God loves them.
Church can be an annoying and maybe even dangerous place, and for that I'm sorry, we need to get better at that, but if you think you can follow Jesus and then decide to just give up and walk away, well you're actually following Pilate, washing his hands of the matter.
This is not just a critique for the Emergents, it's a critique for all of the Church, no matter where think you might be on this list, or if you think none of this applies to you, it totally does, these are the mistakes you can make, that you are likely to make, these are also the gifts you have.
Some writer I read once said (and I really can't remember who it was) that there were only two times Jesus sent a disciple to do something by themselves: when he sent Peter to catch a fish and find a coin in the fish's mouth to pay the tax, which is weird, but Peter was a a fisherman after all and quite capable of piscine coin retrieval.  The second was when he sent Judas out to do what he had to do.
Christian faith is not a lone ranger type activity.  It's got lots of traditions, it's got lots of baggage, and it's got a cloud of witnesses.
Hold it together church... all of you... all of us.

A Typology: Part Nine

The Charismatics/Pentecostals
From one of the oldest rivers in the Christian watershed to one of the brand new little rivulets that have sprung out of the ground in the last 100 years or so.  Here we have a type of Christian that has just barely been around long enough to have maybe a generation or two say: "This is the way we've always done it."
The title Charismatic, does not refer to the people or even their leaders having charisma any more than Pentecostal refers to something involving the actual day of Pentecost.  The two words have to doe with this groups relationship to spontaneous expressions of the Holy Spirit, like happened on one particular Pentecost right after Jesus died and was resurrected.  The root of Charisma is the Greek word Kairos which refers to a time, a certain place, a special moment.  The Day of Pentecost in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, was a Kairos moment, when the Holy Spirit came upon the otherwise lost and confused disciples and holy fire began to make things happen.  This sort of Kairos moment is at the core of many great revivals, and is certainly a part of authentic experience of Christian faith.  Somewhere in the fairly recent past, people found that you could get "in the Spirit" through certain forms of worship, maybe with a little bit of exhaustion and crowd pressure.  People could start speaking in tongues, like it says in the Bible, and people could get slain in the spirit and see visions and be healed and all sorts of really high spiritual kinds of things.
Historically the sort of ecstatic union with the spirit that some of the most extreme expressions of charismatic faith aim for has been the domain of mystics and people who were either exceptionally sensitive or who managed to cultivate an awareness of the Spirit.  I'm going to put some of my skepticism on hold for a minute and admit that I do, in fact, believe that some people have ecstatic experiences of God.  I do believe that there are moments of authentic epiphany and spiritual awakening, and I do believe that sometimes these happen at a tent revival on the old sawdust trail or at a Billy Graham Crusade.  I do believe that these things might happen on a regular basis in churches that really go wholesale in for the experience of the Holy Spirit, referred to by the "old time" Pentecostals as, "getting a dose of the Ghost."
I believe that the occasional trip to the Mountaintop can be a good thing for the soul, but you can't live there, and the nature of such intense experience is fickle at best, and too often a failure of the "old old feeling" discourages people in the walks of faith.
Maybe this is just the frozen chosen Presbyterian in me talking, but it seems that if you can only get in touch with God in the Kairos moments that are grand and (maybe literally) on fire with the Holy Spirit, then you're going to be disappointed and lost far too often.  Perhaps we need to listen to those (really) old mystics that tell us about times when the opposite of ecstatic union is the reality, when the "dark night of the soul" gets a hold of  you, when you have a hard time singing a bubbly praise songs or even saying the Lord's Prayer let alone listening to someone stumble their way through a sycophantic "Jesus we just..." prayer for twenty minutes.
Maybe there are times when someone gives the call: "God is good..." and you know you're supposed to say: "all the time," that you just can't bring yourself to say it or even think it, because God isn't being very present and kind to you at the moment.
There are those within the Charismatic movement that deal with this reality, but the practice of it... well it's just not hospitable to people who can't bring themselves to answer the call to the altar.
The movement has deeply, and perhaps irrevocably changed the landscape of American Christianity, and was also rather influential in the latest round of exported religion from the Western Churches to the Developing world.  In many ways Charismatic worship and faith is perfect for Africa and Latin America, it just sort of fits the exuberance of spirit one finds there, it also is an uplifting experience for people who may suffer greatly from poverty and oppression.
All in all this sort of Christianity is strong, and vital, but it's not the answer, it's not the "right" way to do church, any more than any of these other ways are THE "right" way to do church, it is an option, it is an influence, it can bring us some good things but it has some weaknesses.  It's biggest flaw is a sort of internal bias against those who can't seem to manifest a certain set of defined "spiritual gifts."  If you don't speak in tongues, or if you haven't "given your heart to Jesus," you need to get on with that because your eternal soul is in peril.  It's at that point that some of the more horrible theology starts to rear it's ugly head, and it's there that people get hurt, and God's grace goes begging.

A Typology: Part Eight

The Roman Catholics
As a matter of fact, the endless and exponential division of the Body of Christ into tribes was the major critique made by the Papists against the Reformation.  It was a legitimate fear for Martin Luther, who had to just get so hopping mad that he started tacking things to churches.  The protest that eventually made Protestants a thing, was initially an attempt to get the Church in Rome to knock off the greed and power-mongering and regain it's focus on bringing people to God, rather than just charging admission to Heaven.
There was a whole lot of Popish nonsense leveled at the Reformers, but honestly that prognostication turned out to be deadly accurate.  At some point, after it was far too late, a couple of Reformed types actually acknowledged this fact, that perhaps the church would have been stronger had we somehow managed to remain unified, but by that point we were actually at the point where we were also starting to realize that perhaps power should not be the Church's department.
Oddly enough, it took until the 1960s before the Vatican actually enacted reforms that would have pacified Martin Luther and John Calvin.  Sometime during the reign of John Paul II, Protestants started to look at Roman Catholics with a little less skepticism, and Catholics started to realize that maybe Protestants weren't such Godless heathen.  Now, lifelong Protestants like me can look at Pope Francis and really feel like he actually represents Christianity pretty well.
And there's something about the rootedness and the spiritual depth of Roman Catholicism that seems really appealing.  Sure, I'm pretty solidly Protestant, because I genuinely feel called to both ministry and being married to Michele, but I can freely admit that Pilgrimage, a practice basically anathematized by the Reformers, has become a rather important part of my life.
I think the thing that I really admire most about the RCs is that they can stay together despite left-right political disagreements.  They also have such a strong brand that people who haven't been to church in years still persistently identify as Catholic.  Of course that last one is definitely a mixture of virtue and vice, but still the power of identity that the RC church wields is pretty impressive.
It is necessary to list Roman Catholics as a sort of third party in the dominant cultural division between liberal-progressive and Evangelical-conservative, because they occupy important space in both camps, while maintaining a distinct identity of their own.
In my own life I have moved from disdaining Popery, to admiring from a distance the sacred majesty of our Mother Church.  I have to feel that this at least partly due to some of the important, if subtle, changes she has made in herself of late.  The fact of the matter is that she changes so reluctantly that every inch seems like a mile.
If there is some deeply ecumenical future in store for the Christian faith, I have this suspicion that it will necessarily be rooted in Rome welcoming her prodigal children home.  It will certainly require the grace of God, but then again that's what the parable of the Prodigal illustrates in the first place.
Admittedly, for now, that's just a crazy dream... really crazy.... no seriously, I should probably have my head checked.

A Typology: Part Seven

The Progressives
This lot are particularly hard to pin down.  They share some of the same underlying assumptions as the OSLs, but don't always have the long experience or the academic rigor, or the sort of unifying systematic theology. In fact, this group contains all sorts of different theological and pseudo-theological types: process, liberation, rationalist, social activist, universalist, unitarian, anarchist, libertarian.
At their best, they are question askers and searchers.  They have a heart for the poor and sense that the church should be engaged in the work of justice and mercy above all things.  At their worst they are a dissolute lot of theoretically obsessed non-starters.  Questions become hedges against actually saying anything of value and can suffer from a sort of self-reflective freeze up.
I can't really believe I'm saying this, but there may be such a thing as being too introspective.  Franciscan poster boy for progressive spirituality, Richard Rohr, has pointed out that the weakness of progressives is that they don't know how to do accountability.  It comes from this intentional open-ness to the possibility of being wrong, sooner or later naming things good and bad seems like a sin of being judgmental.  Individual progressives will flock to spiritual directors and coaches, mentors and gurus, because they long for someone to tell them that there is such a thing as truth and help them get pointed towards it.  However, outside of the Catholic Church there isn't a strong enough figurehead in the entire movement to play the shepherd.  You have your Rohr and Merton, but they can be awfully abstract, in their monastic discipline, to your average Presbyterian with a wife and two school aged kids (yeah that's me) who has to cut throats to keep a sabbath on a regular basis.
I read them, I feel a resonance with what they're saying, but I know they have a certain pattern of life that that gives them structure and accountability, but it's the kind of structure and accountability that I just don't think I could deal with.
I like progressives, almost as much as the Old School Liberals, but they frustrate me, because it's hard to get them to commit.  This is a thing I deal with mostly in peer groups and collegial relationships, trying to cultivate community is tough when people can't even take the time to have an honest conversation over a cup of coffee without constantly checking their phone and frequently bailing altogether because they needed to "attend to their self-care."
You just can't count on progressives in general, they're just too flaky and wrapped up in their own stuff.  They're great for talking things through if you can get them to sit still, they have some good ideas and can conceptualize, analyze and diagnose, but when it comes time to actually do?
Let's just say that's been sort of a weak spot for the progressives of late, and it has led to a winter of discontent within the Mainline churches.  People who are frustrated by the "Yeah, but on the other hand..." sort of attitude that often buffaloes some good ideas, will shelve some of their questions and head for an evangelical church that seems to have their act together.  People who experience this lack of progress from people who are intellectually progressive will think it's hypocrisy and either leave altogether or go to the Unitarian Universalists, where it's just all about justice and ethics and anything goes theology-wise.
Sometimes I think that if we could just get the progressives to actually progress the whole world would be a better place... at least the church would be.  But maybe that's their role, maybe they are the impulse control of the Body of Christ, the part that says, hey maybe you shouldn't put your tongue on that, or maybe you ought to think that through a little more before you say it.
I think you see where I'm going with all this, or at least I hope you do: that maybe the diversity and the variety of the church is a good thing.

A Typology: Part Six

The Evangelicals
Now we enter the territory of the Postmodern American Church, or the Post-Post-Modern, or in other words, a rather silly place where terms are endlessly parsed in a what that the world has not seen since the Nicene Bishops spent so much time arguing over the iota in homoousia v. homoiousia.  I sort of blame the internet, but only sort of, because the internet has basically just given a forum for people to divide up into tribes in sort of a new way.
I am aware that there are people who are liberal who would also consider themselves evangelical, in the sense that they have a desire to share the good news of the Gospel with the world, and I am aware that there are conservative folks who have little apparent desire to do so, but for the sake of my own sanity, I am going to use the title Evangelical to refer to the brand of Christianity that most secular people picture when they picture anything but Roman Catholicism.  Evangelicals are right leaning but not fundamentalist, they have rather strong political convictions and tend towards Republican and lately towards Tea Party ideology.  Under the Evangelical Umbrella you have young Earth Creationists, Intelligent Design folks, and even the odd Darwinist, you have millennialists (pre and post tribulation), and you have some who aren't into the rapture at all.  In other words, they are far from homogenous.
So what makes them a type that is helpful to this little adventure?
Well, there are three things, but even these must be held with some flexibility, because of the post-modernity of the whole situation, people from this particular tent, will probably start naming examples, claiming to be examples of exceptions to the rule, but let's just say that, especially in this case: the exception proves the rule.  In other words, if you have to say, "I'm an evangelical but..." the following exception is probably a good example of a general rule.

1. Abortion: this became a huge deal in the late 1970s and on through the 1980s and largely fueled the rise of the "religious right" as a political force that is, even now, basically keeping a largely zombified GOP in some semblance of power.  The animus behind it is the idea that we are killing millions of human beings before they are born, and that is an a priori example of evil that should be right up there with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.  And I have to admit, the idea of killing babies in utero is rather abhorrent, even when I allow my utilitarian side to rule the day, and make it about women's rights and a poverty and social justice issue, I still cringe a little when I think of all the lives that could have been but aren't.  It is a galvanizing issue to be sure, and one in which we have a great deal of trouble even agreeing on terms: is it about "choice" or is it "sanctity of life?"  I'm not stupid enough to try and solve this one in a blog post, but if you're going to talk about what divides right from left in America, you can't ignore the big A.
2. Sexual Morality: Some historians will tell you that Christians haven't always been quite so hung up on sex, but in our current Victorian hangover phase, we absolutely are.  Maybe it's because we're so very indebted to Augustine, who abandoned his mistress and child to become a priest and who, (I think) had some serious Oedipal issues, but whatever the cause, Modern and by extension, Post-Modern Christianity definitely seems to worry a great deal about what people do with their genitalia.  Having lost the battle for strict monogamy as a cultural standard, Evangelical Christianity seems to have re-trenched momentarily over homosexuality, but is pretty much getting routed on that front as well.
3. Persecution complex: I suppose because of the general trend of getting beat up in the culture wars (that they sort of started), and not knowing when to just let go, Evangelicals tend to feel persecuted.  They're not, at least not in any sense that does justice to Christians around the world who actually are persecuted, but I suppose in our world, feeling that something is true almost makes it true.  Enter Fox "News," and their blatant fear-mongering that caters to the sort of political perspective that very closely mirrors an Evangelical mindset.  Being beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men, can really help a group to gel.  It's probably this, which is technically probably a result of the first two issues, that holds modern Evangelicalism together, despite significant diversity on other points.

Hold together they do though, and in many cases they manage to flourish, because finally, they've found a cause that "wins" in postmodern culture: alienation.  Yes folks, they have managed to breed a church that thrives on being "against the world," which has a biblical foundation to be sure.  And this is where I think we need them as the Body of Christ, because we're not particularly countercultural in the Mainline church.  They have obviously tapped into some sort of zeitgeist that is worth paying attention to: why do people in a nation as powerful and prosperous as the USA feel alienated?  Walker Percy asked this question and worked towards an answer in his book Lost in the Cosmos, which is wonderful and well worth reading, but let's just say the answer is complicated, and the evidence is still evolving within our culture.
We need conservatives to anchor us and keep us on course, to root us in traditions, even if the reasons and methods they use are sometimes a bit caustic.  Balance and stability are good and important things lets not forget that.

A Typology: Part Five

Country Club Christians
I'm going to repeat my disclaimer: this is not about you.  No matter how closely you may identify with any of these groups, the reality is that no one is a pure example of any one of the categories, and all of us can and probably should be convicted by the faults we can identify through considering a typology like this.  In this category, more than all the rest, I really encourage everyone to identify and be convicted about the behavior that fits this mold.
Country Club Christians are people for whom the church is a community that exists to make them happy or satisfied, and who, by virtue of their efforts to make it so, prevent themselves and others from really becoming the church.  As a pastor, this category of people causes me more of a hassle than any other, and yet I know pastors who also fit this mold, and in some ways, I fit it myself.
We want what we want.  All of us.  We have preferences, we make assumptions and we think our way is the best way.  We know better than others, we know better than God, and if the universe would just get in line behind our way of thinking, everything would be perfect.
I know, it sounds ridiculous when you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous to everyone, and pretty much no one but a megalomaniac would admit to actually thinking that way.
However, we all act like we believe it's true.
No one will admit to the sentiment that the church ought to bend itself to their preferences, but especially in a democratic system like the Presbyterian way, people will complain, cajole, manipulate, threaten and even leave, when they don't get their way.
The insidious aspect of this is the fact that at the core of their motivation is the desire for the church to be "nice."  By nice, I mean attractive to others, pleasant and comfortable, a place where people can have fun, be entertained and on top of it all be involved in something charitable and spiritual.  It starts with the idea that the church should be a product that everyone should want to buy, like a really exclusive country club, where people will form a waiting list to actually get in.
There are certain modifications of the scheme that people will make to try and float around this jab:
"It's not what I want, it's about what will help the church grow."
"It's not just me, it's for 'a lot of people,' who are unhappy."
"It's not about me getting what I want, it's about the church being more effective in mission."
I could go on, and eventually I could probably offend almost everyone.  But I feel like this sin needs to be called out, and the offense is prophetic.
By prophetic, I don't mean prescient, and I don't mean I'm some sort of super christian telling you all what is wrong with you.  I'm saying that we need to name this evil and do something about it, because it's killing us.
I'm not being hyperbolic, this is literally the source of our decline and demise
It is our own selfish self-interest, it is the consumerist mentality, both within and without, it is our fundamental mistake that the church is supposed to be a provider of religious goods and services that is killing us.
If we are to find a way forward we need to be relentlessly conscious of this pervasive tendency.  If we simply change to decor and remodel the golf course of the country club, we are only making temporary, surface adjustments.  We need to change the guts and bones of what we think we are.
I'm going to round out my typology with a few of the more visible re-imaginations of church that have cropped up both as new communities and as subgroups within existing communities.  I'm going to poke at them a little, and most of it will be in this same prophetic vein.
The truth is: we all need to get convicted about this, repent of whatever grip it has on us, I am hopeful that the rest will actually begin to take care of itself.

A Typology: Part Four

The Milquetoasts
While I'm on a roll, let's talk the opposite of extremists: the people who are afraid to say or do anything.  The classic example is the Church in Laodicea mentioned in Revelation as being lukewarm and spewed out of God's mouth for being neither hot nor cold.  I'm going to shift back to talking pretty much exclusively about Christians now, because that's where I have standing.
I will admit as well, that I have sat the fence, declared my moderation and otherwise declined to take a stand in certain areas over the years, sometimes out of a real sense of neutrality, and sometimes because I just didn't want the trouble.
There is something to be said for diplomacy, courtesy and civilized discourse.  There is also a very real need to avoid naming people who disagree with you your enemy, and generally trying to walk a mile in the other's shoes.  But this too, can be taken too far.
Where extremists are violently and callously devoted to their own agenda, the milquetoasts are hypersensitive and avoid conflict, even healthy conflict, at all costs.  They are sort of the middle children of the faith community, constantly whining, "why can't we all just get along."
It's a fact, in families and in churches, that you can't expect to really be healthy if you don't deal with your troubles.  And I guess that is what really distinguishes a milquetoast from a moderate: where a moderate must have the courage to suffer slings and arrows from all directions and stubbornly insist on balance, a milquetoast doesn't want anyone to get their feelings hurt.
Milquetoasts would probably say that this little exercise in labelling and comparing that I'm up to right now is judgmental and maybe even hurtful.  While I take the point that generalizations and labels can be problematic, without them we would probably not be able to say anything with very much clarity at all.
The trick is then, to try and value all or as many different types of people as you can, even extremists and milquetoasts.  There have been times when people have made some declaration about being offended or marginalized, where my immediate reaction was: "you're just being hyper-sensitive," and of course I have to "check my privilege," or some such milquetoasty thing, and I hate to admit it, but they're right, they're annoying but they're right.  I am a middle class white American male, outside of Royalty, one of the most privileged classes of people ever, therefore I cannot, am not allowed to say certain things about people who are oppressed or marginalized.
I have learned this from milquetoasts.
I have learned to be careful about labels, generalizations and stereotypes.
If and when I engage in such things, like now, I try to be circumspect, and recognize some way in which the human beings who happen to fall in my self-defined categories are also children of God.
But I'm going to keep going with my typology, because I want to.

A Typology: Part Three

The Extremists
So, I suppose it's time to deal with the not so savory folks, the ones who really cannot be defended and who most of us would rather not call brothers.  For Christians, I think the best recent example would be the Westboro Baptist church, those of the "God hates fags" protests. These are the extremists.  In Islam they are ISIS, the Taliban, Boko Haram, and Al Quaida.
In the last century the left had it's share of violent extremists, in fact, if you count Josef Stalin and Pol Pot, they really did terror on a scale that probably gave Osama Bin Laden a giddy shiver, but extremists tend to be reacting against something, the dominant trend of society or a monarchy or a social order, and right now, most of what Jon Stewart just called "team Civilization" is on a trend towards permissiveness and inclusivity.  We are losing a lot of our hangups about sex, drugs and generally embracing a highly relativistic morality.  The Islamists call it Western Decadence, and perhaps that's what it is, but it's increasingly hard to say that the attitudes of openness and decreasing our general judgmental attitudes are any sort of a-priori evil.
Where fundamentalists like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell might have tiptoed up to the edge of totally drinking the hater-ade, they never advocated violence or some sort of religious pogrom against homosexuals or women who had abortions.  There has been violence for sure, but it's done by wing-nuts and criminals, usually in relative isolation, and it was roundly condemned by the fundamentalists.  Over time the action of a very few unbalanced individuals has actually led to a relative moderation of rhetoric even among the fireballers, and it has led to a rather dramatic shift in the attitude of John Q. Public.  I have this theory that the blatant and abhorrent homophobia of Fred Phelps and WBC, actually pushed a whole lot of fence sitting Christians in the direction of inclusivity, because when they looked at the relative merits of the homosexual community over against the hateful rabble rousing of the Westboro people, they saw pretty clearly where the evil was actually living.
I am hoping and praying that the same thing is taking place within Islam as we speak.  If all of this leads to an end to this particular brand of extremist violence, then it will be yet another example of one of those things that is wholly and intentionally evil (think Joseph's brothers or Judas Iscariot), but which God can use in the long view for a greater good.
Unfortunately, there will probably always be extremists, because there's just too much fear and anger out there in the world.  Change breeds extremists in some way that may, in fact, be unavoidable.
At the moment, Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus all have extremist factions, as do atheists and secular sorts, but for the most part the majority exercises some general control over them.  The only case where this is not true presently is Islam, but at the risk of being too optimistic, I believe that the current state of affairs is not a fatal disease, but it is a serious cancer.
Time and exposure are not working in the extremists favor.  Just as American Christians have been able to see that the people with the "God hates fags" signs are far more of an abomination to the Lord than some adorable old lesbians getting married in New Hampshire, so I think Muslims are realizing that the extreme demonizing of western culture by a minority of their number is probably not all in good fun.
It remains to be seen whether the majority can abnegate and otherwise delegitimize the hate mongers among them.  Here's hoping.

A Typology: Part Two

The Fundamentalists
I'm going to hold on to a kinder gentler definition of fundamentalist for this section, and I will deal with what I call extremists in another section.  Fundamentalists are those who believe that there are certain standards that must be upheld by people of faith, usually moral standards along with some doctrinal positions that they consider essential or "fundamental."
The reason why I separate out fundamentalists from extremists is because extremists are dangerous and fundamentalists are not, unless they become extreme fundamentalists, got that?  I hope so, because I don't think I can explain it any other way without just launching into what extremists are and I want to save that for a later entry.
Fundamentalism, in most of it's forms, is a reactionary position.  Usually when people are willing to say something along the lines of "we need to get back to the basic essential tenets of religion X," they imply that most, if not all, of their fellow religion X folk have simply lost their way.  Their evidence can be manifold: decline in numbers, moral turpitude, nasty disagreements and a host of other possible easily diagnosed (by them) failings.  The answer, for fundamentalists, is always simple, or old, and preferably both.  If we could just get religion X back to point Y in it's history, everything would be okay, God would cease flaring his nostrils at us in a threatening manner, and we can really start to be the church that Jesus obviously wanted us to be.
Purity is always a tempting salve to the religious conscience.  It was for the Pharisees and it is for Fundamentalists.  It is also the gateway to extremism.
But in the middle ground Fundamentalism can actually be helpful, after all, who among us couldn't stand to live a slightly purer, more righteous life?  Who among us couldn't stand to shake off a couple really persistent sins in our lives?  Who among us wouldn't be a little happier if our life was just a bit simpler and cleaner and morally upright?
More to the point, who among us wouldn't like a nice neat definition of our relationship with God?
Have you noticed how popular the 12 step programs are?  Well they're named because they have 12 FUNDAMENTAL steps, prescribed actions, clear and simple, not necessarily easy, but workable and concrete.  They are actually the really good kind of fundamentalism, because they are pretty much the only thing that can truly help people who are addicted to something live without that particular substance or behavior.  They have a better success rate than electro-shock therapy, let that sink in... 12 step programs are more successful at helping you kick an addiction than using electricity to basically hit your brain's reset button.
In many ways, I think the sort of fundamentalism of a 12 step program could greatly benefit the church.  Notice they don't judge people, they welcome anyone and everyone, even if you're not an addict you can go and they will accept you.  Their fundamentals do not prescribe who is in and who is out, they want everyone in, because "in" is life and out is death.  Isn't that what the church should be like?
Here's another cool thing about these fundamentalists: you don't need to understand how it works for it to work, you just need to work it.  You don't have to spend your time parsing all the cliches, you just work the program, one day at a time.  Don't know why God allows Tsunamis, AIDS and ISIS?  Doesn't matter just work the steps.  Don't get how God is One in Three, Three in One?  Doesn't matter just work the steps.  This is why fundamentalism is great, you have a freaking list, you have clear essential tenets, you don't have to argue or defend them, they're on the freaking list.
To be clear, I'm not being sarcastic here, I used 12 steps as an example of fundamentalism because I have the utmost respect for what they do, they illustrate why we really need to recover the wreckage of the word fundamentalism, because in many circumstances fundamentalism will save your butt.
Just beware because somewhere down that path there be dragons.

A Typology: Part One

In the wake of any terrorist attack, some of the first things we hear are the insistent voices that cry out: "This is not what Islam is about!"  To which I am sympathetic, because as a Christian, I find myself sometimes classified in broad strokes, and lumped in with people I would rather not call brothers (though on my better days, I work within my soul to do just that).  I am aware that, within Islam, there is great diversity, there are people who love peace and believe that Allah calls them to be beacons of hope and light, and there are people who want to destroy the infidel and believe that Allah calls them to do just that, and there are people on pretty much every stop between those two extremes.
I don't know Islam or Muslims as well as I probably should, given that we share an ancestry, but I do know the Church and Christians, specifically I know the American Church and American Christians.  I found myself humming an old Sesame Street song as I got ready for work this morning, Who are the people in your neighborhood. And it gave me an idea for a series of blog posts, I'm going to do some generalizing and sorting and write a series of character sketches of general types of people that populate the pulpits and pews of the American Church.  I'm going to specifically try and not have any of these be character assassinations, and I'm not going to ever pick on one person.  If I find myself writing about a type that has only one representative in my mind, I'm going to stop and zoom out and start over.
So this, I guess, is the disclaimer: none of these are about you, at least not you specifically.  Each person, in reality, is more unique than any categorical descriptions could really do justice.  Also, I'm going to try and be funny, at least funny in my own sense of the word, because in addition to recognizing the diversity of any body of people, we also need to be able to laugh at ourselves.  The more serious the business, the more important good humor is.  As I mentioned before, people with no sense of humor are dangerous types who like to shoot cartoonists for being offensive.
To get off on the right foot, instead of skewering some type of person I really don't like very much, I'm going to start with a type of Christian that I actually like:
The Old School Liberal
If I was going to have a dinner party, I would want lots of these folks around.  They are liberals from an age where liberal meant something besides MSNBC's audience, and in fact had very little to do with a political affiliation.  Reinhold Neibuhr and C.S. Lewis are OSL, and they have been embraced by many, who in this day and age consider themselves dyed in the wool conservatives.  This type of liberal might also be considered an enlightenment or modern thinker, meaning that they value rationality and the work that we call apologetics, reconciling Christian faith with scientific truth and social movements.  Old School liberals might be unabashed adherents to the social gospel and have no trouble whatsoever with theological discourse taking place in the ivory towers of academia, so long as the work of the Church was still done among the poor and the disenfranchised.
In fact, the thing that makes them "Old School" is the assumption that, in fact, the work of theology, the rather difficult and obtuse arguments that happen within the bounds of Christian Orthodoxy, are best left to those educated and conversant with the long dialogue of faith.  One does not engage a neophyte Christian believer in a conversation about the soteriological implications of the monophysite controversy, however, one might read and struggle to understand those implications for the history of the church and the formation of the doctrine of the Trinity, to which one subscribes, but which one knows must not be held too tightly.
You usually feel more intelligent, and rather more faithful after a good conversation with an OSL, because they are generally Socratic teachers, and most of them (at this juncture in history) have been around the block a dozen times.  They will ask you questions and lead you into the truth (or at least to their point of view of the truth), so that you feel like you've made the journey yourself, and in some sense you have.
Can they be arrogant?  Yes.
Cant they be condescending? Definitely.
Will they use words you have to go look up later?  You can be pretty sure of that.
But the thing is, in my experience, which is certainly colored by the fact that most of my real world exemplars of OSLs are all old enough to be my grandfather or grandmother, it often comes across as gentle advice from a wise elder rather than a harsh critique from an authority figure.
How does one distinguish a really top shelf Old School Liberal from say, your garden variety Old Blowhard (a non-church specific type)?
I would offer that it is probably the presence of questions, some of which may not be entirely Socratic in nature.  The best of Liberal-ness is generally found in the willingness to question and examine one's most deeply held assumptions and convictions.  Liberals who fail to do this, or lose the ability to do this can become as rigid and fundamentalist (in a bad way) as any conservative.  One gets the feeling with a true OSL, that the dialogue is truly a two way communication.  They may be more experienced and more educated than you, their perspective and understanding might seem daunting, but they will be listening and watching to see if there is something they might learn from the eyes of youth, this sort of practice has become part of their nature.
They may challenge you on your own assumptions about things, and if that bothers you, or you cannot accept it from that particular person for reasons of personality conflict, you probably will not enjoy your time with them, but in my opinion, that will be your loss.

Aujourd'hui tout le monde sait que Charlie

Yesterday, I had no idea who or what Charlie Hebdo even was.

Unfortunately, today I know, for all the wrong reasons.

I may have mentioned before that one of the biggest problems plaguing certain types of fundamentalists is that they have absolutely no sense of humor.

Looking at a brief collection of some of the magazines satirical cartoons, I notice that there really isn't a very good analogue for what they did in the United States.  I would say they're kind of like MAD magazine, but what they do is a little more hostile and serious than Alfred E. Newman.  There are things in their portfolio that I find explicitly offensive, and I don't really get offended too easily.

Even in the times that I have been deeply offended, even in times when that offense has been in the name of my God, I would not consider storming a magazine's office with an assault rifle and mowing down the "infidel."

Not because I can't get hopping mad about things, but I'm rather mystified by the mindset that thinks you should kill people over crudely drawn cartoons.

Yes, I am aware that the men who did this do not represent Islam as a whole.

Yes, I am aware that Christians have burned, hung and disemboweled people for blasphemy.

Yes, I know that was not that long ago.

But I am not willing to say that, because violence happens, we must accept this sort of thing.

Getting offended is generally not a productive thing.  You can be challenged, you can be angry, you can strongly disagree, but when you, as they say, "get your nose out of joint," you will have a hard time acting in a rational and constructive way.

You know what offends me?  Violence, poverty, injustice.

You know who I think we ought to defend?  Children, the poor, the old, the defenseless and the marginalized.

God is not on that list.  God is perfectly capable of handling Godself in a scrap.  I'm rather certain that God is going to have some unpleasant things to say to those gunmen, who killed in his name, and I suspect he will be rather more kind to the godless scoffers who have arrived, rather unexpectedly.

From a spiritual point of view, people that do this sort of thing think that they can do God's work using the Devil's tools, and that's a BIG mistake.  The sort of thing that happened in Paris this morning is basically a lose-lose-lose situation for the offended parties.  First of all, it's not going to stop journalists and satirists from doing their thing, if anything it's just going to give them more ammo, and a greater sense of vindication for mocking you.

Second of all, the world is, all of the sudden, going to pay a lot more attention to what they say about you. You have just given a magazine that had very little in the way of international audience, a sudden surge of notoriety.  Now the world knows about Charlie Hebdo, and the world feels empathy for Charlie Hebdo, even if they were offended by Charlie Hebdo, they're now much more offended by your bloody killing in the name of your god.

Finally, you have sold your soul to the spirit of violence, hatred and all that is contrary to the creative love of God, and that is what Satan really is.  When you attack defenseless people in the name of god, you are not serving God, you are serving the opposite of God.  You are not vindicating God's righteousness, you are a slave to evil.

Today, I will pray for the godless critics of religion at Charlie Hebdo, and I will pray for the Satanic men who tried to silence them.  I will leave the vengeance and the justice up to God.

A Big, Small, Wonderful, Mad World

Do you know that people are actually surviving Ebola in Africa?  Yep, even with a mortality rate of 75-80% depending on who you listen to, some people live through it.  Which creates a whole new set of problems, which are pretty much head-scratchers to most of us.  Apparently, there's a stigma around people who have survived Ebola, even after the hospitals have declared them disease free, they may not be welcome back in their villages, because, you know, death juju or whatever.
I'm going to try not to be patronizing here, but I may not succeed so give me grace.
Africa is an amazing place in a lot of ways.  It tends towards being the land that time forgot.  Of course, there are eruptions of enlightenment, there are deep traditions of art and music and there are wonders, both natural and human, but there is also a lot darkness.
With HIV/AIDS and Ebola, it turns out that the ignorance and fear of the people is a major vector of the disease.  People with Ebola symptoms are resistant to head to the hospital because they apparently believe that it's actually the disinfectant spray in ambulances and hospitals that is the cause of death, not the Ebola Virus itself.  It reminds me of the rather troubling story of people who believed they could be cured of AIDS by having sex with a virgin, which of course resulted in a lot of rape, and compounded rather than slowed the spread of disease.
Fear is the mind killer, and if the minds in question have been functionally isolated from much of the progress that has been made in the world over the past 100 years... behold a perfect storm of ignorance.
As the survivors of Ebola begin to emerge from the hospitals they are being greeted with suspicion.  Many of these survivors are young, because young people were probably healthier to begin with and they heal better in the long run.  There will be a wave of orphans, not doubt that will join with the orphans of AIDS and Genocides and overall the situation just seems like it's going to get worse before it gets better.
In other words, there is not a viable option for these people that will now be shunned from their home communities.  The sort of society that exists in much of Africa is much more interconnected and inter-reliant than many of us in the west can really imagine.  The people in these villages need each other to survive, they're very far from the isolated nuclear family units of Europe and America.
Ignorance and fear must be counteracted in the wake of Ebola and HIV as much as they are in the path of the oncoming storm.  Work is being done, explanations are being made, and my prayer for Africa is that the people will listen.
The forgiveness and reconciliation work that is being done in Rwanda is what gives me a glimmer of hope.  The orphans of the genocide are being cared for by the people of Rwanda,  The public and ongoing act of reconciling between victims and perpetrators of violence is long and difficult, but it is being done.
As much as I wish that the people there would learn from our scientific and rational way of dealing with things like Ebola, we can learn something from them as well.  We can look at the effect of fear and ignorance and learn to root it out, yes, but we can also learn a lot about resilience and community, and picking up the pieces.
While it may mystify me that so many people can believe that disinfectant is more dangerous than Ebola, it should probably be of greater concern that I/we are so poor at showing forgiveness and grace.
We can be so protected by technology that we begin to feel invulnerable, but we're not above being blinded by fear.  I worry that if we ever do experience a pandemic like what is happening in Sierra Leone, we might not be so easily pulled out of the darkness of our own fear.
As Jesus taught us, it is good to remove the log in our own eye before we try to take the splinter out of someone else's.  Even if the other person appears to have a log in their eye, it is always good to consider what you might learn from their predicament.  This requires empathy, this requires some difficult self reflection, but if you're going to help, it just has to be done.

What does regret mean?

My dog is an idiot.  And I'm not just talking about your run-of-the-mill dog type behavior, I mean his brain turns off the instant he smells something or sees something he wants to chase.  He's some sort of Labrador mix, and I have been working for most of his 6+ years under the delusion that, like other Lab-type dogs I've had, that he is going to calm down and become the really wonderful companion sort of animal those dogs were after their exuberant puppy-hood.
But he's not, he's apparently got some sort of hound DNA in there and he's a chaser, a nose to the ground, I'm not stopping until it climbs a tree, chaser.
Zeke's life with us started with the promise of a "free" puppy.  I know darn well there's no such thing as a "free" puppy, there are only puppies with no up front cost, usually because the owners of said "free" puppies are desperate to get rid of them.  His mother was a nice enough black labbish dog, who the owners claimed was a purebred, despite what the white markings on her chest and feet would seem to indicate.  Now I'm not a dog snob, my best friend growing up was a mutt of such indeterminate parentage even guessing at pedigree was laughable.  And I'm also not a moron when it comes to dogs, I have managed to more or less train the aforementioned mutt (with my Dad's help), I have trained our one "high class" pedigreed animal, a Chocolate Lab, to the point where she was absolutely trustworthy around small children and the only negative to having her around was in being a tripping hazard and the occasional episode of flatulence.
In fact, we got Zeke with the reasonable expectation that he would be socialized into the pack by Maggie and mirror her truly wonderful family style.  Also, we had kids who held puppies and pretty much had to have one.  I knew when I said we could go "look at the puppies" that we were going to get a puppy. I went in, at least partially, with my eyes open.
But knowing better only makes regret even worse.
Zeke is a nice enough animal, and that's really his saving grace, otherwise he has very few redeeming qualities.  He smells, and it's not a smell that can be cured with regular bathing.  He is irredeemably wild, even if it is in a friendly, exuberant way.  He is both defiant and painfully submissive, which is weird, because it's hard to know if you're going too far or not far enough with correction.  I am a believer in the form of discipline that dogs use on their own pups, a firm grip on the scruff of the neck and bit of a shake.  It worked wonders with Maggie, she clearly deferred to my dominance, and (after the puppy years) I very rarely had to yell at her or discipline her in any way, and I could pretty much trust her to do what she was supposed to do, at least until we got Zeke, he was actually a bad influence on her, pretty much the opposite of what I had in mind.
Zeke's not getting the hint.  He knows when he's gone wrong, but he doesn't change his behavior.  It's been getting to me temper wise, because it's been over six years.  In that time, I have come to regret our decision to get him in the first place.  I have never regretted owning an animal before, even the cat that we had to hide during our apartment years.  He's not dangerous, in fact, if anything he's too friendly with other people.  He's a good companion on walks and he is always pretty happy, but here's the thing: I feel like I have utterly failed as his pack leader.
My failure started the minute I decided to bring him home.  It continued when I didn't really sink the time into training him that he needed, because he was difficult and seemed oblivious, and because I had human children that needed more attention and because I thought my dear Maggie would get him in line (I think she regretted my decision more than me).
I believe that owning an animal is a lifetime commitment.  For better or worse, I am stuck with Zeke and Zeke is stuck with me.  I'm not giving up, because for his own well being he needs to get it under control, or else I'm going to be scraping him off of someone's bumper.  So I'm going to try a different method, and if that doesn't work, we'll go for something else.
The reality is that it's not going to be all that long before old age calms Zeke down, but in the mean time I am treating this as a lesson in regret, and living with regret.
You can regret all sorts of things, some of them are big life decisions others are just dogs or a tattoo, but the spiritual process is kind of the same, you have to accept, and love and grow somehow or other.  Or else you're just stuck.  Zeke and I have been stuck for too long.

Round and Round

Having learned a few things about our personal preferences over the years, we finally just stayed home on New Years.  No parties, no gatherings, nothing.  We watched the thousands of people gathered in Times Square from the safety of our television and not once did I regret not "being there."
To tell you the truth, it's sort of heartening to see a totally secular holiday become as contrived and overwrought as the religious ones.  Thankfully, we're still reeling from the conspicuous consumption of Christmas that we haven't yet started any obligatory New Years gift giving.
All is quiet on New Years day.
While it is entirely a mental attitude, it does rather feel like a clean slate, a fresh calendar, a new cycle of stuff happening.  What's the first brush stroke on the canvas, the first mark on the clean sheet of paper?  Is the beginning really more significant than any other day of the year?
Probably not.
But this is all part of our human existence in linear time, we mark passings and we celebrate these annual cycles.  I don't know exactly why, but I do know it has been going on for a very long time, and has attestation across cultural and geographical boundaries.  Since we first started observing the sun, even when we thought it was a big chariot ridden across the sky by a god, we have noticed that its behavior was rather predictable and we ascribed some sort of meaning to its cycle.
Bam, you have a culturally significant event, which people can share and celebrate should they so choose.  And you also have a rather widespread feeling of starting over again.
Michele and I watched Silver Linings Playbook last night while we were waiting for midnight to strike.  It was one of those movies which might loosely be called a comedy/drama or maybe even a romantic movie, but there was something weird about it; it made me kind of tense for a good part of the movie.
The main character, played by Bradley Cooper, was a man fresh out of an institution after suffering a violent breakdown precipitated by discovering his wife's infidelity, and nearly beating the man to death.  As it turns out he has been bipolar for most of his life and is now forced by law to deal with that reality.  I have to give Cooper some serious credit for his job in playing this character, he manages to capture the seriousness of the problem, and the really problematic behaviors associated with it, without destroying the empathy you have for the character.  You want to smack him sometimes, but it's out of a desire to help him see the obvious truth.
It ended up being a good movie to watch on New Year's Eve because it is essentially about a couple of very broken people finally getting a clean slate.  You can't help but be happy for them.  There are no guarantees that everything is going to be fine in the future but you are left hopeful, that maybe this year will be better than the last.
Isn't that why we have probably celebrated cycles and new beginnings for so very long?