As One with Authority

Once upon a time, so they tell me, clergy had authority.  Sometimes I allow myself to believe it, usually when someone anachronistically shows deference to my position.  I try to be aware of the fact that I may be wielding it so that I don't unintentionally damage others.  But for the most part I don't really feel like I've got much clout, and yet, I'm what most would call a leader.  Here's an attempt at an objective description of "leading" in a Presbyterian Church:

1. We're basically a democracy, so I'm chosen by vote.
2. My salary is public knowledge, which is again approved by vote (the only part of the budget that is), and in a lot of churches said salary is one of the single largest line items on the budget.
3. I can preach, exhort and cajole, but ultimately I can't order anyone to do anything.  I cannot fire anyone, or cut them from the team, I can't make them be more committed to the church.
4. I have learned that guilt trips and political maneuvering are manipulative behavior and sign of bad boundaries and can perhaps even be considered bullying, at least if I'm the one doing them, because I have "power."
5. I constantly have to balance between over-functioning (doing everything) and being seen as a slacker.  And I have to deal with the reality that people will think I'm doing a lot better job at the pastor thing if I over-function, even though personally and for the sake of the community it's one of the worst things I could do.
6. I do not have any magical powers.
7. I do have feelings, and they can be hurt, but I'm supposed to try super hard to love the people who hurt them..

I'm working through Matthew 21 right now, where the religious leaders in Jerusalem question Jesus' authority.  He responds with questions of his own, parables and in many cases some fairly insulting judgments against them.  And while rhetorically and in public opinion Jesus wins the argument, we know a cross is right around the corner, because Matthew keeps reminding us: "they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds."

I am not trying to equivocate myself and Jesus, nor do I intend to complain about my congregation or my vocation as a whole. I actually like my job, with all it's peculiar quirks.  What I would like to examine is the nature of authority and specifically what constitutes authority in the context of the 21st century church.

The office and the education only go so far.  I know a lot of things that absolutely no one cares about.  Harry Emerson Fosdick once quipped that, "no one ever goes to church to find out what happened to the Hittites."  Well, first off, I know who the Hittites were, and I have read an assembly of theories about what became of them, but this does not give me ability to transform lives.

And what about the authority of the office and the ordination?  Well, I remember in Seminary and shortly thereafter, hearing all sorts of cautionary tales about how people can abuse the "role" of pastor.  Occasionally I have had people defer to me because of the role, but more often than not, in a non-hierarchical (and well... Scottish) structure like mine, any attempt to wield power or authority meets with almost automatic resistance.

People from Baptist traditions often speak reverentially about the role of Pastor, so do people from certain immigrant backgrounds, but these are just rare tastes that sort of help me understand what ministry "used to be like."

I'm under no illusions that the way it used to be was somehow better.  I see how, even now, egomaniacs can "succeed" in ministry, but I have no desire to walk that road.

I guess I just have to look at Jesus, who didn't actually grasp at the power that he pretty surely could have had, neither did he pull back from those who questioned his authenticity and intentions.

This sort of thing leaves me feeling helpless and powerless, and maybe that's just where I need to be to lead.

Didn't Jesus say something about the meek inheriting the earth?

A Rather Disturbing Observation

I'm about to engage in a rhetorical maneuver of questionable value, but bear with me.
I'm about to compare ISIS or ISIL, the "so called" Islamic state, with Dispensationalists, otherwise known as those Rapture people.  Here is a brief survey of their commonality:

1. Both believe that they are favored by God and therefore they will be vindicated.
2. Both believe that people who do not agree with them are and should be condemned to destruction.
3. Both have decided to interpret their individual sacred texts, either Koran or Bible, as a sort of choose your own adventure novel, and have come out with an eschatological perspective that is completely at odds with the idea of a loving and merciful God.
4. Both will react violently (either physically or verbally) when you challenge that interpretation.
5. Both are generally discredited by the sensible and rigorous theology of their own larger community.

To be clear now, I am not using this comparison to claim that anyone who goes to see, and perhaps even likes the new Left Behind movie is in any way the moral equivalent of a terrorist who beheads reporters.  What I would like to point out to a whole bunch of people who are currently engaged in painting a large segment of our human family as being delusional and violent because of the actions of a very few of their number.
If you're paying attention, you will notice that the world community of Islam is, in no uncertain terms, letting us know that they feel the same, and perhaps worse about ISIS than we do.  In addition to the persecution of Iraqi Christians, ISIS is persecuting a whole load of Iraqi Muslims as well, and we would do well not to forget that.
Jesus one time said this thing about taking the log out of our own eye before we try to take the splinter out of someone else.  As Christians we have not done a particularly good job of stopping our own faith from being represented by the tin-foil hat crowd, whether it is something like Creation Science or Dispensational theology or whether it is the catastrophic hybridization of triumphal Christianity and American imperialism/exceptionalism.  Our own house is certainly not in order.
The thing is though, we've sort of gotten our beheading/jihad days behind us.  Our most blood thirsty religious fantasies are now movies starring Nicholas Cage, not young angry men in stolen tanks and humvees.
I think Islam as a global religion is trying to get past this phase as well, and as much as I want to say that ISIS is evil, I don't want to extend that judgment to Islam as a whole.  Honestly, I don't know that many Muslims, but the ones I have met have seemed like fairly gentle, rational people.  The Muslim voices that I need to listen to now, to hold back the fear, are the ones who seem to feel the same way about fundamentalists and extremists in their house as I do about the wing-nuts in mine.
If I'm going to be serious about this Jesus thing, I'm going to have to start opening my heart to the suffering of people, and right now, I see a world community that is suffering hatred and derision because of the actions of a relatively few members, who have been driven to desperation by horrible circumstances and even worse theology.
This whole situation really does have the capacity to start an Armageddon-ish scenario, but if we're going to get through it we're going to need to work together in our common humanity.  We're going to need our Muslim brothers and sisters to fix this, and they're probably going to need our help.  Since I don't believe the Rapture is a thing, I know that we're in this together.  Me and mine aren't going to magically disappear before any sort of tribulation starts, so I hope we can get our act together and stop all the hate and fear.
I do believe that one day, "every knee shall bow" and "every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."  Until that happens I'm going to try as hard as I can to love my neighbors, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist and Agnostic, as well as I possibly can .
Because were all in this together.

Science Being Scientific

I really love it when science does its thing. I just read an interesting blurb about a couple of math/science types basically calling into question some of the most widely accepted, and at the same time poorly understood (including by me) assumptions of modern cosmology.  First let me say, as is mentioned in the article, the research has yet to be peer reviewed, and while I may not be much good at higher math, I know that peer reviewing is really freaking important to the scientific process, but what I want to talk about is actually the process, and how good it really is, so hey, don't get mad if you're not ready to admit the big bang, black holes or other articles of your faith are not actually true.  You can hold on until someone else disputes their method or their data.
This is a beautiful thing, when science (and I hate to admit mathematics) actually brings an honest challenge to what "everybody knows."  I have heard none other than Stephen Hawking espouse the doctrine that the big bang theory, as a starting place for time and space, actually disproves the existence of God, because if there is a beginning then there cannot be an eternal being at the heart of creation.  I could have told him that theologians wrestled their way past that particular stumbling block 1700 years ago, but I suspect he would probably be frustrated by the lack of data and mathematical proofs used by the Council of Nicea.
Because even though Theology shares the ology with various scientific disciplines, our methods are rather more inductive and subjective than most scientists would find acceptable.  But what any honest philosophy or theology must do is submit to perpetual and rigorous re-examination and revision.  You cannot ever settle on something and name it absolute truth, as soon as you do that you become an idolater.
Science has its share of idolaters.  Watch science-ish television shows sometime.  They present for your viewing pleasure all sorts of fancy scientific conjecture about origins and possibilities, usually read by Morgan Freeman, or James Earl Jones, to give it that special gravitas.  And very rarely do they mention the fact that what they are selling is essentially a theory, and if if they do use the word theory, they do not define it properly.  When they say Quantum theory or the theory of Evolution, they do not present these sets of assumptions as what they are; one systematic set of beliefs that explain somewhat coherently the data that we currently have.
Theories are presented as facts, and most people do not have the scientific chops (read: didn't pay close enough attention in seventh grade) to understand actually what a theory is: a work in progress.  You start with a hypothesis, you design experiments, you gather data, you interpret data, then, if you'r lucky you can come up with something like a result, but a lot of the time the result is that your hypothesis was completely off, so it's back to the drawing board with a new hypothesis and some new tests, if your experiments actually confirm your hypothesis then you're in for some real trouble, because other scientists are going to have at your work and try to tear it apart, and repeat it, and if they can't repeat it that's going to count as a big fail.  If they agree with you, then more scientists are going to try to rip you and them apart if at all possible.  If most of you're reviewers decide that your methods, data and conclusions are valid: hooray you have consensus, but consensus still doesn't amount to anything like truth.  Eventually if you have enough stuff to cohere together, you might get a theory, or you might get absolute bumpkiss, there are no guarantees.  Science, actual science is very difficult and frustrating.
It's actually freaking amazing that we ever got to the moon, or have iPhones, mostly because inventors tend to bypass the actual science and just make stuff.  Technology moves fast, because people want stuff that does things for them.  Which is why I now have basically a supercomputer that I can carry around in my pocket.  You may have heard the fact that the average smartphone has something like 100 times the computing power of anything used by NASA during the Apollo missions.  That's right, we get a new iPhone every year, but going to the moon? Screw that, it's nothing but cold, dark and dusty.  Most of the scientific exploration of the universe is being done by mathematics, which absolutely sucks to this Star Trek fan, but it's the only way we're ever going to get a warp drive or something like that, by figuring out how the universe is put together.  If we don't actually understand how space and time work, we're never going to figure out how to get around.  So I'm glad someone finally managed to poke a hole in the dogma of singularities and things going bang, not because I am more ready than anyone else to accept a new reality, but because reality really doesn't care whether I accept it or not.
It's tempting sometimes to be frightened, intimidated or frustrated by the way that scientific theories and consensus seems to change.  Having your dogma punctured is never very much fun, but it is an absolutely vital step on the road to the truth.

Easy Offense

I have actually begun to feel sorry for the most powerful man in the world.  You would think that when you finally claw your way to the top of the political heap and become President of these United States of America, people would begin to show you a little bit of respect.  The other day though, our Commander in Chief was disembarking from Marine One, and he gives a casual salute to the Marine security detail, with a cup of coffee in his hand.  It's really a wave, a half a nod to a Marine in full dress uniform, which means he's mostly there for show (Marines don't dress like that when they have to fight).  I've seen this little act before, a lot of times the president doesn't even acknowledge the guard, why should he?  In case you're unaware of the structure of our executive branch, the President is actually the highest authority when it comes to the armed forces, that's why we call him Commander in Chief, yet he's also a civilian, which means he is not necessarily bound to the code of military protocol.  If, as a civilian, I see a soldier, I may choose to salute him out of respect or even just vague gratitude, but I am not bound to do it.  However, within the system, salutes mean something a bit more, you'd better do it when you're supposed to and do it right (which I'm not even sure what right is, but I've seen movies where people get all angry about a sloppy salute, so I'm going to assume that there is a right and wrong way to do it).  I get it, in the service, a salute is a sign of respect, but I've seen lots of them done hastily and not in perfect form, particularly when carrying something or when there's something distracting, like, I don't know, a big honking helicopter running in the background.
Obama gave a Marine a sloppy salute for sure, but he didn't have to do it at all.  Of course certain media outlets are treating the whole thing as though the President peed on the poor guard's shiny black boots.
In my lifetime, I've seen Presidents criticized for everything from refusing to eat broccoli to having a little in-office hanky panky with an intern, but I'm really starting to think that nothing Obama does is ever going to make certain people happy.  People have made him a villain, and they're willing to believe that almost anything he does is crap, and avoid giving the guy any credit whatsoever for his successes (I've heard the Affordable Care Act called Obamacare a lot less since it started actually working).
I'm guessing, by this point, he's probably super glad that we have a two term limit for the oval office.
But I can't wrap my head around something, or maybe I can, but I just don't want to admit that it's true.  Why is it that we seem to have something called a "scandal" involving Obama almost on a weekly basis?  I mean Clinton was being impeached for lying to Congress, that was an actual scandal in the proper sense.  Obama gets a howling crap-storm for wearing a tan suit and having a cup of coffee as he's getting off a helicopter.  Don't we have bigger and better things to get upset about?
Maybe it's just that we're almost 20 years down the road of polarization towards the extremes.
Maybe it's the fact that we're just that much more "tuned in" to everything that happens.
Maybe it's because Barack is not as approachable and charismatic as Billy.
Maybe it's because he's black.  That's the one that really turns my stomach, because I was so proud of our country when we put him in office, because I thought it was a real step in the right direction in terms of our long-standing problem with regard to racism.
Why doesn't he get the same sort of deference as Bill Clinton (also a Democrat, also during the era of the 24 hour news cycle)?  See, I think that Barack Obama is a pretty ordinary President, he's not a cult of personality like Kennedy, Reagan or Clinton, he's not sinister and ruthless like Nixon, he's not a Bush (nuff said).  He's sort of balanced and moderate in most regards, he's actually pretty darn boring as a President.  As a matter of fact, he's more like Jimmy Carter than anyone else, except Mitt Romney was no Ronald Reagan so B got a second term.  He has been frustrated by an obstructionist Congress, and mired by economic and military realities that he had nothing to do with creating, so why do some people want to blame him for every calamity, real or imagined, that comes down the pike?
I'm not saying everyone should love him, but cut the guy a little slack. He's got a hard job, and sometimes he has a cup of coffee in his saluting hand.

Complications

I heard an interview on BBC radio this morning with a Saudi journalist.  He was talking about ISIS and the current round of boomy-things that are happening in the Middle East.  It may be far too early to hope, but things seem a little bit different this time around.  First of all, you have the involvement of a lot of different people that are normally trying to kill each other (Iran and Saudi Arabia for instance) in what can only be called as a mutual self-interest in making ISIS no longer a thing.
The Saudi journalist said something like: ISIS is not just an anti Shia movement, or an anti western movement, they are against everything that is not them.  They are against moderate Islam, they are primarily defined by being against things.
A friend of mine in Plumville used to tell about the people he knew that he called, "aginners,"  For those of you who don't speak Western Pennsylvanian, that's people who are "agin" this, or "agin" that, "agin" is a form of the word against.  ISIS is apparently the ultimate group of "aginners."
Any rational person should quickly grasp that this is not a fruitful way of being a human being, but then again: Fox news is a thing, though to their credit they have not beheaded anyone yet.  The problem with defining yourself by what you are against only truly rises to the surface like the whitehead of an infected pimple, when you finally run into the rather difficult task of deciding what to do next, after you have purged the infidel from your presence, now what?
ISIS is now in full control of a swath of land that most of the world has officially decided to avoid.  We are having serious disagreements about whether or not we should even bomb it, and it's not an ethical discussion about whether bombing is right, it's a basic reality that it probably won't do any good, that centers our dilemma about whether to make the whole place go boom.
It's sort of like the black knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail, we have the military might to cut off ISIS' arms and legs and leave them nothing but a bloody stump, but the power of hatred would still leave them threatening to bite our kneecaps.  How does one deal with such an enemy?
I don't have an answer for that.
I am much more interested in the all too temporary shift in global politics that this has caused.  They are bad guys to absolutely everybody right now.  In the same way the Al Quaida was after 9-11.  The opinion of the world is against them, and that is more powerful than bombs at this particular moment.
This type of Islamic Fundamentalism needs a glorious and divinely sanctioned victory as its validation.  Up until now we have always given them some spider hole to escape into, prior to 9-11 they could flee to almost any nation in the world and find some refuge.  After 9-11, their choices were narrowed significantly, but they still had Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and virtually anywhere in the Middle East, except Israel.  If we had not gone all Conan the Barbarian on that whole segment of the globe, their hiding places may have diminished, but we didn't, we became another occupying army, largely validating the claims that the terrorists made against us, in the eyes of anyone who had their house blown up or their children end up as collateral damage.
We have a chance to take a different course this time around.  We have, for a moment, a unity of purpose shared by some very odd fellows indeed.  It will not last long though, and we need to remember that, and do everything we can not to be the goof that tips the balance.  I think Iran and the Saudis and even the Syrians, are invested on a lot of levels in making sure this ISIS thing doesn't continue, therefore we should do everything that we can to avoid reminding them that they really don't like the U.S. and Israel very much at all.  We need to know that these countries, while they may cooperate with out plan, are not going to suddenly become our best buds. When ISIS is gone there will still be a great animosity towards the west, and fertile ground for extremism to continue to grow.
This momentary pause does not mean that Sunni and Shia are finally going to resolve their differences, through the fight.  This momentary pause does not mean that Iran is going to give up altogether on trying to develop nuclear capability, or that the Saudis are going to stop trying to buy the world with oil.  It certainly does not mean that the Arab world is going to play nice with Israel.
But it does mean that we might not need to play the part of imperious imperial bad guys in this one.
Wouldn't that be nice?

Pushing Through the Fear

My son is arbitrary and stubborn.  I wonder where he got that from?
This morning we were having a "discussion" about whether he should join in a school robotics club that uses Lego EVO and teaches about computer programming and such.  Jack went to a week of STEM camp this summer where they built and programmed robots using the EVO system, and he loved it.  But, as I remember, he was also a bit tentative, because he didn't know what it was going to be like.  As the week went on, he loved it more and more, and by the time his team won several awards in the end of week competition and the instructor pulled me aside at the end of the week and made sure to tell me that each elementary school ran their own program during the school year, and that I ought to sign Jack up, I thought for sure he would want to do that!
As it turns out, not so much.  When the flyer came home on Monday, I said, "Hey Jack! It's the robotics club, wanna join?"
"No," he said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I don't want to get up earlier than I have to."
"Do they meet before school? It doesn't say anything about when they meet."
"They did last year."
"What time would you have to be there?"
"I don't know."
"Whaddya mean you don't know?"
"I don't know."
"What if it's not that early?"
"I still don't want to."
"Why not?"
"Because I've decided, I don't want to."
"That's not a reason, that's a description of what you want."
And on, and on, and on we go. I began to picture Melville's Bartleby The Scrivener, saying "I prefer not to," over and over again.
I actually threatened to sign him up for the debate team so he can learn what causation means.
At some point, I realized that he was just afraid of something.  He was afraid he was going to sign up for something that was "just too much."  And I realized that he is my son.  He's got introvert batteries, and right now a days worth of school is about all his batteries can manage.  The idea of spending more time there is absolutely repulsive.
I also realized that the reason why I am pushing him to do this is because I regret the fact that I wasn't pushed to do much of anything.  I had the same predilection as Jack, I wanted to get home, to my safe place and just re-charge.  All the stupid interpersonal relationships that school required, for better or worse, just wore me out.
But my school didn't have clubs for things that I loved as much as Jack loved that STEM program.  Or if it did, I willfully ignored them.  See the flyer for the robotics club was given to me by Caitlyn, Jack was hiding his, having already decided that he didn't "want" to participate.
It must be rather annoying to Jack that I understand him better than he understands himself, because when I called him on being afraid, I could see it cracked something open: his pride.
He's not afraid, he's almost eleven, he's not afraid of new things, he just doesn't want to do them.
I began to play nicer, I told him that there are lots of things that I don't "want" to do, some of them for valid reasons, but, in my experience, when my reasons are less than valid, and I end up doing the thing I was trying to wiggle out of, I usually am glad that I did.
"So," I insisted, "you need to have a good reason why you don't want to participate.  If you can't come up with one by the end of the day, you're signing up for robotics club."
As it turns out, he really has no idea what the club does, or when they meet, or what it would be like to be a part of it.  In other words, it's just baseless fear that holds him back.  It's just his introverted nature.
I know he's going to need a push to do this sort of thing.
I needed a push, but in most cases, my parents were too nice to give me that push.
I'm wondering though, where is the line between doing what is best for my son, and letting my own regrets run the show.  I don't want to push him to be what I want him to be, but in this case I have the feeling that he needs the push to be what he actually wants to be and to do something that he will really love.
Unless he comes home with a really good argument, he's going to get a push.
If he does come home with a really good argument, I'm signing him up for the debate club.

An Apology

There only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done."  All that are in Hell, choose it.  Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.  No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.  Those who seek find.  To those who knock it is opened.

-C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

This is not an "I'm sorry."
This is another sort of apology, an apology as in an explanation of a belief or a practice, as in apologist: "a person who defends or supports something," according to the dictionary.  I was aware, as I delivered my sermon yesterday, that I was opening myself up to some questions and perhaps some accusations.
It has become, over the years I have spent in ministry, a great sorrow, to see many people I care for very much, interpret their own Christian faith simply as an exercise in "hell-avoidance."  In fact, I have come to suspect that many who are supposedly bound for glory, spend altogether too much time thinking about damnation.  A couple of years ago, Rob Bell wrote a book called Love Wins, where he questioned the foundations of our belief in Hell as an eternal punishment, and he was greeted with much weeping and gnashing of teeth from certain quarters.  Though to be honest, he didn't really say anything that other revered and staunchly orthodox thinkers had not already said.  Saying entirely novel things isn't really Bell's strong suit, he is good at mining up extant material and presenting it with fresh coat of paint.
Karl Barth, in all his voluminous Germanic theology, was of a similar mind, he just could not say it with anything resembling brevity.  Lewis, in his Anglican allegories, had a beautiful and imaginative vision of Heaven as the only true reality and Hell as nearly nothing.
The point that has been made, over the centuries by a diverse group of people who might, very broadly be called universalists, is that God is infinite and thus God's love is infinite, and that to say there is a sin that God cannot forgive and life that God cannot redeem is perhaps the only true blasphemy.
I understand why, in a world where persecution and suffering for the Gospel is living possibility, you might have a deep desire for God to judge those who are crushing you day by day.  I understand why some people might want to believe in a blissful future of salvation and peace and why they might have a strong need for some inverse to that promise for those that ain't among the number.
But I have a hard time believing it, primarily because of the Bible.
Which, I know, sounds weird to those of you who are probably already thinking I've gone all apostate.  See, I take the Bible quite seriously, even if I don't take it literally.  I read in the sacred texts about a God who rescues slaves and makes covenant promises with childless nomads, and loves people who are pretty awful and broken at times, and who warns and warns and warns, and even when "judgment" comes, never actually gives up and always keeps a remnant.
And lest you think I've given up on Jesus, I want you to know that I fully believe that Jesus is the way, and the truth and the life, and that I base that belief on the utter and confounding consistency of what he taught with the constant forbearance and forgiveness of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  I believe, as Jesus taught his disciples, that there are two distinct options available to all human beings: The Kingdom of Heaven, and the The World, but these are not merely teleological (how things will be) choices to be made they are ontological (how things are in their being and their now-ness), they have to do with the way that we live right here and now every bit as much as they do with how we're going to spend eternity.
I think that the Gospel should be Good News and a message of hope, and it bugs me that many people present it as yet another form of damnation to avoid.  I think it is we who do this, not God.  I think Jesus told us enough stories about unmerciful servants, and grumbling workers, and prodigals returning (not to mention bitter brothers), that we ought to be able to see how serious God is about the love and forgiveness thing.
Consider this hymn from Paul's letter to Philippi:

Therefore God also highly

exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and

under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

-Philippians 2: 9-12 (NRSV)

I used to think of that as sort of a promise that one day everyone was going to realize that I was right.  I used to think that one day, all of my churchgoing and sin-repenting and dying to self was going to be rewarded and, I suppose, I also believed that there were going to be some people who were in for a nasty surprise.

But I was supplying a lot of imagination to that vision.

What I see now when I read that is a scene where I, and everyone I ever loved, hated, served, or wronged, is going to be together and receiving God's grace and glory.

The church, or a life of faith, is not a way to earn or even find salvation, it's practice for an inevitable moment when God's reality replaces our illusions.

Not that it's going to matter a whole bunch, but I like to be prepared.