AnderspeaK

WHEN REFORMERS DON’T REFORM

Tue, 2 Feb 2010 09:32:00 -0800

Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda
We are all about reform. We are the present stewards of an attitude handed down to us by greater reformers and it will be the centerpiece of our legacy to the next generations. But here’s the question:
What happens when the reformers won’t reform?
The PCUSA is deadlocked in its inner conflictedness over sexual ethics, chiefly homosexuality. Progressives organize and strategize push after push, ever-inching their way toward the end zone while evangelicals bulk up to hold the line. It is a deadlock because it is a political struggle, and mere votes can never determine truth. It is a deadlock precisely because it distracts us from our central task: the adoration of Christ.
An indispensable quote from Calvin Miller:
The best way to deal with sin is not to attempt reform but to adore the Savior. Winning our our lower nature is made positive by adoration. While we worship the enthroned and inner Christ, we cannot be intrigued by negative preoccupations with sin. Rules, instead of limiting our sin, define sin, rivet our attention to it and lead us to desire it. Worship , on the other hand, avoids all interest in sin, pointing our hearts and minds in a totally different direction.
In our gentle pursuit of a Third Way, could it be that the best hope for reform comes simply through renewed piety? The idea would certainly be offensive to:
1. Progressives who are more interested in personal gain   than God’s glory.
2. Progressives who prefer politics to piety.
3. Evangelicals who prefer politics to piety.
1. Evangelicals more interested in personal gain   than God’s glory.
2. Any who have no intimacy with Christ or desire none.
Do we need to respect any of these offenses? No. Should we lose anyone under these specific terms, we have nothing to grieve. That is real reform. To turn our faces from our deadlocked conflict to the bright sun of God’s glory would do several things:
1. Burn away those with no interest in God’s glory.
2. Burn away whatever in us detracts from that glory.
3. Shame and unmake deadly Pride all around.
4. Reset and reboot the Presbyterian heart and soul.
Is it conceivable that left and right could agree to drop the struggle and together turn toward our Savior for an extended—perhaps permanent—period of total adoration?
Can Progressives learn patience and for the sake of the whole church lay down their political arms? Can evangelicals reinvest trust? Saying no to either question seals a stalemate; the only clear alternative is to sweep the board clean and start all over.

BIG TABLE HYPOCRISY

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 06:00:48 -0800

Ecumenism is at the heart of all authentic Christianity. We desire the oneness that Christ desires for us, and we grieve the fragmenting denominationalism that has been part of our history from the first century onward. We struggle with our interpretation of the texts and traditions that comprise Christian faith, and differing convictions lead us to create specialized communities-of-faith around those convictions. The Holy Spirit is understood (in part) to be the “convincer/conviction-maker” of faith, so those convictions are in large part the work of the Spirit. So why does the same Spirit seem to convince God’s called people differently? We don’t know, but the differences have been an embarrassment to Christians—and a poor witness—throughout church history. Division is one of our chief embarrassments, along with our even more shameful attempts to force a visible unity (see Inquisition).
Liberal Protestantism presently upholds Unity as a premier grand essential of the faith. The past century saw a concerted effort to network differing denominations into goodwill networks that held core, orthodox convictions in common—majoring on the majors, minoring on the minors—that go by names like WCC, NCC, WARC, REC, COCU, et. al. While we’d like to believe that these groups are formed out of a heart that sincerely desires to please Christ and accomplish a unified witness to the world, and we want to believe that the central impetus is to announce the good news of the person and work of Jesus Christ to every nation, we rarely see that fruit borne through its various organizations. More often than not, the fruits look less like gospel harvest than Peace Corp initiatives. The center is less about announcing the Gospel than pursuing “Peace,” “Love,” and “Justice.” [the quotation marks mean that these terms can be spun out of all popular recognition.]
Scriptural support for unity is everywhere. From scripture, ecumenical groups may propose an undeniable good—a clear call to unify what sinful people have unrightfully divided—the Body of Christ. So they say Come, let us reason together, let us no longer do what is divisive to the Body of Christ. We all come forward with our heads sagging for having been so judgmental all these years.
Curiously, along with the call to unity we hear a similar championing of diversity. Now clearly, diversity stands at the very heart of disunity, so this must be a special kind of diversity—certainly one that means something other than not wanting to be part of their club. Unity must have terms. While they extol the “Big Tent” or proclaim “Room at the Table” for everyone, do we see something other than the Gospel driving this enthusiasm? Is an increased devotion to Christ a pronounced fruit of that unity?
Ecumenical diversity is a selective diversity, which is just another way of saying that if you don’t like what we like, you can count yourself out. And there we are, back at square one; the table is not infinitely big, and everyone is not equally welcome. The PCUSA in particular has been famous for reaching out only with the Left hand. We have no enthusiasm whatsoever for reconnecting with Catholics, Southern Baptists, Charismatics, or even other Presbyterians, but the ecumenical drive to jump into bed with liberal Episcopalians, liberal Lutherans, and liberal Reformed denominations is, well, passionate. What is the central uniting factor here? Not Jesus, regardless of whatever their mission statements may say. So much for authentic diversity.
The only appeal they have to less-liberal brothers and sisters in Christ is unity per se. Simply put, they would guilt us into supporting their agenda. Here we are back to the embarrassments of forced unities. For evangelicals committed to the PUCSA (a group by no means immune to guilting), this cry for unity may be the only thing keeping us at the so-called Big Table. If you disapprove of the terms—say you are Pro-Israel, Pro-Marriage, or anti-abortion—you pose a threat to the kind of Unity and Diversity they champion. It’s okay, you can still be a member (after all, we are liberals). Don’t expect any particular empowerment (your quoting of scripture will be dismissed with a sophisticated sniff), but your dues will be collected. After all, we must remain one.
Unity—as presently packaged by liberal Protestantism—is a false righteousness designed to solidify power and advance the progressive social agenda that has risen up as an ersatz gospel. In its second ranks likely marches a conform-or-die authoritarianism dressed-up as righteousness. There can be no unity with them except on their own terms.
Presently, both conservatives and classical-liberals should unite in skeptical scrutiny of the growing Unity hermeneutic. What is called Unity by some may mean the mere absorption of others, and absorption is just another word for annihilation.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:11:10 -0800

Iraqi (okay, Persian) astrologers witness a triple conjunction of Jupiter and Regulus in the constellation Leo and conclude that a king of kings has been born in Israel. So they travel to Israel and meet with the current king (really a Roman puppet-king) named Herod, only to discover that Herod was clueless. “What king?” he asks. “We saw the stars,” say the astrologers.
So Herod summons his board of experts who determine that the next true king would have to be born in the City of David: Bethlehem, a no-place cow-town five miles south. Bethlehem means “house of bread.”
Herod, infamous for snuffing out competitors, tries to get the astrologers to sniff out his new rival. “Let us know when and where you find him, so we too can worship him!” Hypocrisy and lies. Herod would have no threats to his own rule—no hope other than the hope he Herod himself invented could be allowed. Herod would snuff out any threat to his own control or rule. Some have suggested that he is the dragon of Revelation 12:1-4:

1A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.
That’s Herod: a dragon—a devil—crouched, waiting.
The astrologers head south to Bethlehem about that time. They were, as always, watching the stars. Jupiter stops in the south and backs up—retrograde motion—above Bethlehem. They take it as a sure sign.
We know now that Jupiter (The King Star, to Persian astrologers) dropped down at an angle before bounding back up at the same angle in the southern sky—just like an arrow or a pointing finger.
They find the little family and in one of the many marvelously-ironic pictures from the Bible, these great astrologers bow down before the peasant toddler. These were not Jewish theologians acknowledging their king, they were Gentiles. The house of Mary and Joseph (good Jews) was certainly defiled, but what hospitality!
The Holy Spirit sometimes speaks to certain people in certain situations through dreams. The astrologers get such a dream and avoid returning to Herod, but rather high-tail it back to Iraq on backroads. Joseph also gets such a dream and is warned to skip town, so he takes his wife and child on the road south to Egypt. What Jew in his right mind would want to go back to Egypt?
Herod, stood up by astrologers, goes into a predictable, tyrannical rage. With cruel efficiency he orders the slaughter of the innocents (which plenty of historians prefer to doubt)—all children 2 and under. Like Moses.
The Gentiles dropped knees to Jesus. The powers of Rome—and in time his own people—wanted him dead. Even as an infant his mere existence threatened at least one of the world’s greatest leaders and builders.
Jesus is indeed a threat. He is a threat to every ego and ambitious materialist. He is a threat because he will dethrone every worldly king, ruler, expert and otherwise authority. He alone is worthy t rule, and none can stand before him or beside him unless he should allow it.
Jesus is disliked or disbelieved chiefly for one reason. He is Lord, and you cannot be.
He remains a threat, and the tension will only end one way: every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is indeed Lord. There is an easy way for that to happen and a hard way. The easy way is life, light, and fulfillment. The hard way is judgment, condemnation, and despair.
The easy way begins by asking lots of questions; the hard way just happens when you avoid the questions.
The questions come to us when we take the story seriously. Seriously.

Our hope is that the Joy of the Christmas message will be shared by as many people as possible.

Merry Christmas to you and yours,

Noel Anderson

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 08:43:54 -0800

As a student at Princeton Theological Seminary I chose NDE's a a topic for an educational psychology paper. I spent two weeks in the Psychological library of Princeton University poring over every issue of the Journal of Thanatology gathering the most professional NDE data I could find. Upon graduation and ordination, in my first church in Dallas, Texas, my hard work as a student was blessed by a whopper of an account:

Bob was one of those highly-motivated Bible students you love and hate at the same time. He had several mail-order degrees from magazine-ad Bible colleges, none of which I had ever heard, which means he was in my office twice a week to challenge me on the finer points of scripture and doctrine. He was a devout, well-informed follower of Jesus.

Bob entered the hospital with a massive stroke and was there for months. Elders and I prayed over him, anointed him with oil, and waited. He was moved to intensive care and we awaited the phone call telling us he had gone to be with his Lord. The phone call came, but it wasn't what we expected.

Over the phone his wife pleaded with me, Please come, Bob woke up and I think he's been to hell—all he kept saying was ‘I don't want to go back! I don't want to go back!’ I zoomed to the hospital, knowing that this was likely a NDE. When I walked into the room, Bob looked relieved and pleased to see me. I sat down and asked him to tell the story from the beginning. I should say that Bob was not quite as he was; he was emotional, poetic, and his heart was on the surface, eager to please and lovingly warm—very unlike the Bob I had known. He began:

I went there! I was in heaven! and Pastor, it's all just like it [the Bible] says. Everything was gold: the streets were gold, the buildings, the statues—everything—and it's not like the gold here. Oh Pastor, you're going to love it! The gold there was pure. It was so pure you could see through it. It was so pure it made you pure to be near it. I wanted to see Jesus; I wanted to be with him, and I could tell where he was and I went to him, but there were huge golden doors with no handles on them, so I started knocking and praying and asking to be let in. This guy comes up to me and asks me what I'm doing. I said "Jesus is in there and I want to be with him." He says, "You can't." I asked why and he said,"because Jesus needs to be alone sometimes." I didn't like that so I said,"Well who are you?" He said,"Paul." And I said, "Paul who?" [At this point Bob's face was eclipsed with authentic shame and his face folded up in tears like a small child's] He said,"PAUL!"
And I felt so embarrassed. But then others were there: Philip and Bartholomew and others. And it was so wonderful being with them and you could ask them anything and they'd tell you.

I interrupted Bob and asked him what they talked about and for how long. He said a long time but he could remember nothing of the discussion. There was a break in Bob's memory of the experience at this point but it picked up again toward the end.

I finally got to see him[Jesus], and Pastor it was so wonderful! It is what we're made for—I was on my face before him and it was everything complete and perfect. I just wanted to stay there forever—someday we will—and you're going to love it. Just to be there praising him was the completion of my soul. It is for all of us. But after awhile Jesus said I have to go back, and I said WHY?[when he said this, it was whiney like a child] He said I had more to do, but I didn't want to go. Finally I said 'Okay, Lord, whatever you want' and I started getting pulled away from him. It was the most painful thing I can imagine feeling—to be so near him and then being drawn away—it was impossible, and I changed my mind and I pleaded: 'I don't want to go back! I don't want to go back!' [Again, these were the words he said aloud as he sat up in ICU out of his coma].

I asked him if there was anything he learned of the mind of Christ while he was there--could he remember anything Jesus had taught him or revealed. He seemed to be searching and couldn't remember anything, but then like it just came to him:
Oh yes, there's one thing. You know how churches are always fighting and arguing about their differences and all the different splits and denominations? Jesus hates that!

This from the mouth of one who had been obsessed with right-thinking, right interpretations, and proper doctrine.

I promised Bob that he would have the chance to share his story with the congregation in time. He remained in the hospital several more days and was released. The stroke had caused him some uncontrollable drooling and weeping, but he was sound in mind and retraining himself for public life.

He and his wife returned to church about six weeks later. I asked him if he was ready to tell his story to the congregation sometime soon, and he said "what story?" I later sat down with him and recited verbatim his account to me, and he remembered none of it. Two signs of his experience lingered: one was his solid, convictional faith in Christ, and the other was an event I observed during Sunday School. As I walked around checking on the different classes one Sunday, I listened at the door to a discussion Bob was in. The subject was death, and Bob—now usually rather quiet—piped in: "You don't have to worry about death! There's nothing to be afraid at all!" I walked in and challenged him: "How do you know that, Bob?" He looked at me as though I had questioned the most obvious fact in the universe. He seemed to be searching for an answer—or the source of his conviction—and he said, "It's in the Bible!" I smiled and nodded.

WORD TO ATHEISTS II

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 09:17:16 -0800

The Bible confirms the following:
1. Humankind's slavery to Death is a given.
The Garden of Eden story proclaims the human condition: we are the dead.
2. No manmade fantasies or inventions of any kind are allowable. Unless God self-reveals, all knowledge and ideas about him are fantasies and inventions.
“You shall have no other gods/make no graven images, etc.” The prohibition against idolatry is constant, but it is also constantly violated. The Old Testament can be seen as a people’s ongoing record of their own spiritual failure. There is something irretrievably compelling about idolatry; good people can’t stay away from it.
Modern idolatry takes new forms: Narcissism (individual and corporate), Progress (humanity = God, usually driven by faith in technological progress), Ignorance (including avoidance and apathy: “Who cares? I don’t know and I don’t need to know—and don’t bug me when I’m watching Sports Center.”) and Religions (death is not real but just an illusion). It may be a nice idea, but if it isn’t truly initiated by a true God, it is all just playful denial: the Dead chattering to the Dead pretending they’re not Dead.
The Bible is unique in its consistent witness that God who is above all will not and can not be defined, limited, or even adequately worshipped by human beings. The God of the Bible is self-knowing, self-naming, self-sufficient, self-valuable, and all-powerful. The Bible also reveals that the God who self-reveals does so as God alone sees fit to do. The God of the Bible is in no way subject to humanity’s desires or wishes.

Question: Aren’t these just human projections onto what we want to call God?
Humanity does not contain these values in and of itself to project onto God.

3. The only allowable knowledge about God must come from God himself.
Personal revelations are indisdinguishable from fantasies and inventions. Unless God speaks for himself, its all just another Mein Kampf. All manmade religion is idolatry. Again, only the Bible roundly prohibits human modifications to God’s self-revelation. (Hey Scientists: You think you invented objectivity?)

4. If God is to be relevant, he must be evidently more powerful, perfect, etc. than Death.
God must prove God is stronger, more eternal, and more perfectly ubiquitous than death. Otherwise, death remains the observable final power of the universe.
The central witness of the Bible is God’s self-revelation in the person and work of the historical Jesus, who is proclaimed as God Incarnate, and whose central act was entering into human death only to triumph and prove defeat of death in his resurrection.

Question: Isn’t resurrection an re-adapted concept—just another invention?
The idea of resurrection is unique and unprecedented. No one expected, anticipated, or otherwise conceived of resurrection. It is in Jesus an utterly new, utterly unique phenomenon. It stands as the singular proof that God—not Death—has the final word.

5. Death in the forms of affliction, pain, suffering, misery and poverty—as well as the biological death of humankind and the cosmos—must be addressed.
Death is not only our biological end, but its shadows mar life with pain, suffering, injustice, poverty, disease, etc. God’s relevance and power over death can be demonstrated in overpowering these shadows of death as well. Pain and suffering are the acid tests of any philosophy, worldview or religion.
The Jesus of history took on poverty by choice, and his ministry is marked not only by proclaiming the eternity of God, but by tireless works of healing. Jesus demonstrates an authority over nature and reality that is not seen in any other worldview. He addresses not only Death, but its shadows as well.

6. If belief in God, or service to God, is for this life only, then it is pointless, meaningless—all vanity. It must be about more than temporary solutions.
All religious or political enthusiasms designed to make the world a better place are in vain. Yes, they have some temporal value, and do temporarily increase our comfort, but are all swallowed up in death. For a faith system by any name to be worth anything, it must deal with the acid test, and must do so in terms of eternity. Any faith system that is merely temporary—for this short life alone—isn’t worth the time. Science and medicine will take care of us just as well.
Paul says it succinctly in 1 Corinthians 15.9:

If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all humanity most to be pitied.
The proclamation of the Bible is that although science, technology, politics, progress, and every other invention of humankind—as well as the natural cosmos itself—will come to its end in Death, that life eternal is offered to lowly human beings by a loving, all-sufficient God who is infinitely greater than Death—who has proven and demonstrated God’s more-perfect-than-Death reality—and who has revealed this to be true through God’s own self-revelation rather than a human projection.
Before there was science and technology (or even decent astronomy), the Bible witnessed to God’s ultimate intention to save human beings from Death’s seemingly-absolute power by completing the cosmos in a new act of creation. The promise of “a new heaven and a new earth” means a great change in the cosmos, perhaps not unlike the resurrection itself. Not a mere resuscitation, but an utter, total renovation of all that is worth eternal preservation.
The Gospel (which means good news) is that God will save those whom he knows, and he knows all of us who come to know him through his self-revelation.

Question: Why doesn’t God self-reveal more completely? Why so cagey? Why doesn’t he just split open the sky and stick his face down to us?

According to the Bible (remember, we don’t get to make this up), that’s God’s business. Apparently, God wants us to be in relationship to him in this tenuous manner. This is the Bible’s definition of faith. We relate to God in the way that God wants and chooses, not the way we want. That keeps God God and humanity humanity. Read the Bible.

But the Bible is weird and ancient, full of outmoded worldviews, militant brutalities, and followers who seem like idiots.

True. Enjoy.

And today’s followers are no better.

True, and many have used and abused the Bible in horrendous ways, but that’s not the Bible’s fault. People ruin everything. If your problem is with people, then we’re on the same page. Maybe you don’t have the same problems.

So hang out with us—maybe we can learn something from you. Find a church—maybe nothing will happen, but maybe something will. God gives a lot people faith unexpectedly. Sometimes people who don’t want it at all find themselves compelled by it. In any case, it can’t hurt you to risk checking it all out a bit more deeply.

WORD TO ATHEISTS

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:06:49 -0800

You may not be a real atheist, or you may go by that name when in fact you're more of an agnostic—you feel there are things we just can't know—but you are so incensed by the excesses of religion that you cling to the atheist moniker. From the Christian point of view, you can be called a materialist—one who believes reality is confined to what can be experienced in a rather predictable, knowable way.

Honest atheists admit to the limitations of what we can know, but find the whole religious idea of God either unknowable or unthinkable, but certainly beyond what we can see, taste, touch, smell or hear. Furthermore, if God wanted to make himself known, all he would have to do is appear. And he doesn't, so belief in God is irrelevant at best and foolishly dangerous at worst.

At the risk of over-reducing your case, know that it's not our intention here to attack your position or set up a straw-man argument. Rather we mean to pursue your line of thought and step into your worldview.

We know your life has an irretrievable emptiness.

We know that without God, you necessarily live in avoidance of death that is certainly imminent for you and all you love. If not in a state of constant avoidance, you are regularly terrorized by the void—by the absurd complications of chance that have resulted in you, us, and the mysteries of our self-awareness. It is truly a terror to be self-aware in a godless void of universe. You are among the greatest of intelligences this cosmos has ever seen. That is humbling.

We know the horror of the particular self-awareness that life and consciousness may be all nothing other than the fickle progression of DNA—a coruscation of random complexity—a terribly temporal fluke of our expanding universe.

We can put ourselves in your shoes—if only for a few moments—by imagining that there is no God. We too can feel that the existence we live in as an extremely strange and inexplicable wonder. With no God above, behind, beyond it all, we can feel the amazement that we exist at all.

In a universe full of hot, deadly, radiant light and heat, we are able to continue living only because the conditions are—amazingly—just right.

We can imagine that those factors might be so completely extraordinary that it requires trillions of galaxies with trillions of stars in order for there to be even one where everything is just so completely well-balanced.

We want to let others know we're here if there are any others, but this won't happen in our lifetime. We're unfortunately far apart from one another, and human life is pitiably short compared to geological—let alone astronomical—time.

To be a person is to live an infinitesimal life, compared to all around us. Our lives are a miniscule flash in world history, and history a flash in geological time, and our solar system a flash in universal time.

We're not likely to have the satisfaction of knowing much of anything; we die too soon and the results will not be in.

If we are the only occurrence of self-aware, self-conscious life in the universe, then we can feel the sadness of knowing that everything of which we are self-aware—history, science, arts, religions—all will die alone. Not only that, but no one will exist to appreciate, pity, or otherwise remember who we were or what we had been. Legacy does not exist. The singularity of an intelligent human species will end and be over. The universe will continue to spread and cool into universal, eternal death and non-remembrance.

We can imagine this as well as you.

Our lives and consciousness are profoundly absurd accidents. Life is a joke, death the punchline, and no one is laughing; no one is there to laugh.

Human life is ultimately pointless. So maybe we advance a few thoughts or otherwise contribute to history through arts and sciences—we give others something to think about that encourages them to press on in a little bit better form for awhile. Perhaps you pioneer a famous breakthrough that people remember for hundreds of years after you're gone—but does this matter? Will you experience their remembrance? When college students of the 26th century are poring over your writings and preserved photos intent with respect and admiration, will you have satisfaction? No, you will be just as nonexistent as if you had never lived; you will just be dead and gone. Soon enough, so will your admirers and their great-grandchildren who will remember nothing of any of us.

Dying is really dying; death is final and ultimate. You don't get to be a ghost or otherworldly spectator. Your consciousness and self-awareness will be as if it never existed. The books you leave behind cannot contain your life.

Death is final not only for us and all we love, but death will have its way with our species, our planet, our solar system, galaxy and universe.

Death is clearly more than an obstacle to be avoided in this life; it is the largest, most significant reality in our lives, an absolutely constant backdrop that occasionally reaches in to our awareness, as much as we may hate and labor to avoid it.

Death is almighty, all-powerful, everlasting, immutable, irresistible, omnipresent. Death is the completion of everything. Death is perfect.

If there is no God, there is still a god by the name of Death. Death will consume you, your family, your friends, your accomplishments and contributions, this earth, this universe. In the end of things, Death will still be perfect, eternal, and absolute—in fact, death will become all things and nothing will remain outside of Death.

Atheist, Agnostic, Materialist: you have a god whose name is Death, and you have served and worshipped Death whether you know it or not. You are far more religious than you think.

Your worship likely involves avoiding Death in all its forms as long as you can. You fight affliction, pain and suffering—which are Death's little reminders and promises—in every way you can. Your chief worship is delaying Death, which serves Death well enough. In the end, at the conclusion of your lifelong service, Death will be revealed to you in completeness. Death will show you its all-powerful, gaping maw, and you will—be clear here, you absolutely will—be swallowed up and annihilated.You know this is true and you know that there is no escaping Death's perfect power.

Why not be honest and admit it—
your god is Death and you live in its service.

You can complain, plan, scheme, run around in circles and cry about it, but it will still come and you will lose.

The only response to Death is submission; there is no alternative. Your best attempts at slight delays are irrelevant, even laughable.

Your worship is some form of materialism—avoidance through self-medication—whether it be new toys, entertainment, humor, accomplishments and awards—all of these are attempts to distort and lengthen the time you live in, though you know it is quickly contracting.

Time too, is Death's servant; Death owns it, controls it, and uses it to keep you obedient.

Every experience of beauty is undercut by Death's looming shadow; black nonexistence is the only background against which anything can be seen, unless you have become truly adept at avoidance. The sunshine of an ideal day is stained by Death's immanence. So beauty is pretty much irrelevant, and intimations of immortality all fantasy and dreams.

Unless you can live as to totally ignore it (which is foolish for all who want to live with open eyes), your world is all about Death—your life and world are inescapably trapped in its whirlpool. In a world without absolutes or certainty, Death is certain and absolute.

Your inward sense of wonder and selfhood is the result of biochemical sloshings that mean little-to-nothing in comparison to Death, your god.

Every inward inkling of meaning or significance you've felt are nothing but the randomly interacting atoms in a moment of temporary complexity which will soon all spin out into higher entropy. Which is good for Death, bad for you.

Death is a cruel god. No service to Death will significantly lengthen your stay. No avoidance will escape it. Death cannot grant reprieves; Death must have more death as quickly and completely as is possible, for Death is perfect, and your life gets in the way of Death's completion.

Life is the joke; death the punchline, and no one will be there to laugh.

Religious pagans believed in Death. Those who didn't serve Death directly—or by whatever name—nonetheless came to terms with its reality through imagination, fantasy, and inventions. Religions, by and large, are manmade systems to avoid Death or otherwise deal with its all-powerful nature.

Some are systems-of-avoidance, like hedonism, materialism, or sensationalism. Others are systems-of-denial, like reincarnation or other immortality schemes.

Religions regularly embody these elements in differing degrees. In that they are manmade, they are dead already, and will die with the death of the human species.

All is fantasy and imaginative avoidance, and all will be swallowed up in Death, which is to say it is already all dead.

Atheists, don't fool yourselves. You serve—you worship—Death either by avoidance or denial. You have a god.

Agnostics, you are unknowing no longer: Death is absolute. Time to acknowledge your Almighty.

Materialists, all you're working with is temporary and will dissolve. The Death question is all that matters.

So now the altar call. Death is your god. You don't need to come forward and kneel at the front of the temple because Death has you whether you do so or not. You belong to Death. Anything you say, do, believe, or practice is ultimately irrelevant. Death is all that matters. So give yourself to Death. Confess that Death is your god, and that all else is pointless. Your hopes, loves, and aspirations are all mere vanities. You are, in Death's eyes, pointless, worthless, useless, and expendable as soon as possible.

Do you really want to continue in Death's service?

An alternative to think about

We Christians say that in addition to avoiding Death, you are also avoiding God, who is absolute, eternal, light and life above and beyond the power of Death. We didn't make this up, nor did those who wrote and/or assembled the Bible. If they did, it doesn't count and Death is our god as well.

The Bible confirms the following:

1. Humankind's slavery to Death is a given.

2. No manmade fantasies or inventions of any kind are allowable. Unless God self-reveals, all knowledge and ideas about him are fantasies and inventions.

3. The only allowable knowledge about God must come from God himself.

4. If God is to be relevant, he must be evidently more powerful, perfect, etc. than Death.

5. Death in the forms of affliction, pain, suffering, misery and poverty—as well as the biological death of humankind and the cosmos—must be addressed.

6. If belief in God, or service to God, is for this life only, then it is pointless, meaningless—all vanity. It must be about more than temporary solutions.

MORE TO COME

The Tyranny of the Virtues

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:20:45 -0800

Every virtue has a shadow side. Love, ill-defined, can degenerate into self-destructive eros. Mercy, without good judgment, devolves into mere indulgence. Patience, without persistent courage, can lapse into apathy. No single virtue—removed from the context and relationships with other virtues—can sustain virtuous thought and action for long. Like a wheel with a single spoke, soon the balance is compromised and the sole virtue becomes a single-note fanaticism.

One of the greatest, undiscovered minds of the 20th century belonged to Dr. John P. Sisk of Spokane, Washington. His work and writings focused on intoxication and fanaticism, particularly in regard to the stoned thinking of the 60s and its political fruit. In short, fanaticism is loss of perspective—climbing out so far on the limb that one loses perspective of the whole tree. This is true of specialists, zealots, purveyors of alternate consciousness, and all otherwise utopians. Overspecialize, and you come to think that your own chosen good is the only good that matters.

Fanatics believe in goodness and virtue—at least of one kind. The flaw begins when that one virtue is expected to answer to an inordinately-broad spectrum of human problems. That one virtue gets stretched out of proportion and becomes a distorted template through which the fanatic views all of reality. Your chosen virtue becomes your be-all, end-all prescription for everything that plagues humankind.

The ecological hypochondriac, the incensed feminist, the gay activist, the Christian fundamentalist, conspiracy nuts, any member of Al Qaeda, and a certain type of vegan—all these and others operate from a kind of righteousness that is expected to cover all of life's intricate complexities. We’ve all known the type of fanatic who can’t even talk about baseball without relating it to his or her own pet cause. They are intoxicated with their singular virtue and its power, and become blindly self-righteous in their campaign to correct the rest of us toward their personal prescription. What, you can’t see it? Here, try my glasses—they work perfectly!

There is truly good in all of them (except perhaps Al Qaeda), but it is a partial good, an amplified singular good, and the wheel is out of balance.

Life is complex and complicated.

We do not have answers for everything. Rather than reducing reality to a manageable simplicity, we ought to acknowledge life's complexity and live with that tension in good form. The virtues—when taken together—constitute a full complement for our correction.

The antidote to fanaticism comes from refusing to allow one virtue to stand in the place of the many. FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, PATIENCE, JUSTICE, MERCY, SELF-CONTROL, MODESTY, INNOCENCE, HUMILITY, etc.—however we care to build the list, the whole list must take precedence over the singular virtue. When anyone says,"It's all about LOVE!" we need to hear this as a potentially dangerous oversimplification. Our response, gently and kindly offered, must be to the effect of, "No, it's all about FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, PATIENCE, SELF-CONTROL, etc."

Holding all the virtues in something of a unified balance on the big wheel not only keeps us centered, but it keeps us humbled, for we know that all virtues are not ours to wield to our own ends, but are our superiors, meriting our diligent service.

Fanaticism will always result in a prideful self-righteousness—something totally unbecoming of all Christians.

The Myth of the Rogue Pastor

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:39:56 -0700

For years, I have been asked, “Would you lead a church out of the PCUSA?” The question is a problem, because quite frankly, pastors don’t lead churches out; elders and congregants do.
Large church Pastors are usually suspect of something by their presbytery peers. If it’s not egomania, it’s selfishness; if not superiority, it’s congregationalism. Presbyters gripe when commissioners from the largest churches don’t show up at their incredibly-engaging presbytery meetings. Ask these pastors for their opinion, and between yawns they will criticize the way the presbytery conducts business, referring usually to unreasonable inefficiency or remarkably poor quality of proceedings. No, they weren’t asked to lead (which is what they do best), so one can only assume that they were wanted merely as an audience-quality-enhancement for other presbyters to read their reports to. Then, when their churches express a desire to reaffiliate with another denomination (where their leadership is very much needed), they are accused of disloyalty and unfaithfulness.
The Presbytery of San Joaquin released three congregations and their pastors to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. In each case, the pastors can not be said to have “led” those churches out. In every case, the churches had motivated elders and others who sought these changes. In all cases, the consensus—the evangelical orientation—of the congregation predated the presently-installed Sr. Pastors. So unless they also happen to be time-travelers, these pastors can take neither credit nor blame for the votes to reaffiliate.
Still, in certain ecclesiastical circles, one hears disparaging comments about such pastors; they are called renegades or rogues—the assumption being that they are firebrands—Big Drivers—that have unduly influenced their congregations and buffaloed the Session and congregation into conformity.
Where does this supposition come from? Show of hands: How many of you have ever moderated a large church Session? They’re not exactly docile sheep, are they? In congregations of 600 or more Presbyterians, how much unity is there regarding anything? You flatter any pastor you accuse of “leading” them out of the PCUSA, or even out of the parking lot.
Considering that the vast majority of PCUSA congregations contain less than 200 members, most presbyters live in and serve small-ish congregations; they are likely to assume that large congregations work in the same way. This is small-church thinking, which—don’t get me wrong—is great for smaller churches. But doesn’t this reveal that such presbyters (usually pastors) take for granted that all pastors simply have the power and ability to “lead” their congregations however they choose? Of course, otherwise, they would not be so suspicious of the pastors of departing congregations.
The fact is, good pastors don’t “lead” their congregations in or out of a denomination. A good pastor that pushes praise services on her church before the congregation believes it to be a good thing soon becomes an ex-pastor. Good pastors do not push or force change; they manage change, specifically the changes that grow out of the good and prayerful consensus of the session and congregation. To manage change, as opposed to fancying yourself some kind of especially-gifted “change agent,” means you are able to set aside your personal theological hobby horses and attend to those legitimate concerns that are at work in the collective heart of God’s people. While not all large-church Pastors are excellent models of humility, it mustn’t be assumed that he or she has a ring fixed through the Session’s nostrils. I for one have never seen this in a large church—certainly not to the degree many would charge—though I’ve seen it in plenty of smaller ones.
So let’s put the myth of the rogue pastor—the Big Driver—pretty much to bed, and let’s kindly correct those presbyters (or GA committees) that think churches want to reaffiliate because the pastors are telling them to.
This is clearly something bigger, and God is certainly at work in the midst of it.

On The Invention of Lying

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 10:02:51 -0700

REVIEW: THE INVENTION OF LYING,  a film by Ricky Gervais
Spoiler alert [I probably give stuff away you don’t want to know, so beware if you haven’t seen the movie yet]
Setting
The setting is an atheist world where everyone speaks the truth and only the truth all the time. For Mark Bellison (Gervais), it is a bleak existence.
A Fabrication of Mercy
In a rather brilliant scene, he visits his mother on her death bed. She is overwhelmed with terror at her imminent death, and Mark is crushed with sympathy (I’m very interested to know what the source of this sympathy is—where does it come from in that world?). Because it is unbearable for him to watch his mother suffer at the absolute power of the void and death, he tells her THE LIE. He tells her there is a Man in the Sky who will provide her with everlasting bliss and she will be reunited with her loved ones and live in a wonderful mansion. It sounds like a big lie, but in a world of no liars and no God, it is an enormous, joyous relief to her, and she dies in peace.
But others overhear the lie and believe, because they live in a world where they have no choice but to believe.
This same “all religion is a lie” building block was used by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. In Cat’s Cradle. Everyone knows it’s a lie but they need it as a functional antidote to the despair of death’s absolute grip on all of reality. Gervais takes the same flawed premise—that religion is just a lie perpetrated to comfort the dying—and builds from there. Humanity is made up of gullible sheeple; only Mark is superior. Clearly, in that world, a lie is needed. If there is no God or resurrection, then Absolute Death is God of all. Rather than face that appalling void, the lie of a heavenly afterlife creates a cozy suspension of belief—a system of denial enabling people to at least muddle their way through an otherwise pointless existence. Even Nihilistic masses need their opium.
Beneath this, another “antidote” to pointless suffering presented in the film is a kind of cheery materialism—enjoying the mystery of the goods you can get while you can get them. We may not know where it all comes from or where it all goes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your breakfast on a sunny morning. This is Epicureanism-by-default, and it too is a form of denial—a suspended belief.
Gervais excels at religious satire, but he can’t do so without raising some excellent, essential questions. If he expected to enlighten religious sheeples of the world to the truths of atheism by this script, he will be terribly disappointed. Asking the right questions is just as likely to inspire authentic faith, for it will certainly reveal the limitations of materialism.
The opposite story needs to be told:
One about people who all lived in nothing-but-the-truth, but also one in which everyone had direct communion with The Man in the Sky. Everyone did just fine. Then came one with THE LIE; namely, that all that was real was what you could see, touch, taste, etc., and everything else did not exist. Since The Man in The Sky is invisible, he doesn’t exist either. THE LIE was called things like Wisdom and Knowledge, and it became completely fashionable. THE LIE caused broken connections between people and the Man in the Sky, to the point that a critical mass just gave up, and that became the new standard.
The result of THE LIE was universal alienation of people from the truth of the universe. In place of the truth about The Man in the Sky, they received the universal truth of Death, the new absolute.
So people are utterly lost and . . .um, dead. . .unless The Man in the Sky somehow breaks back in and re-reveals himself. Even if he does, he will have to prove that he is more universal and more absolute than Death. And how might he do that?
[Question] Why doesn’t he just snap his fingers and fix it all?
Apparently that’s just not his style.
[Follow-up] Well, what exactly is his style?
He will have to demonstrate that his power is beyond the universal power of Death by being killed (perhaps by us—we’ll have to be the ones to verify that it’s not a trick). It will have to be real Death—like our own, in fact, it must be exactly like our own or else how could we possibly identify with it? And it will have to be a real triumph over death; he’ll have to come back (or be brought back, because if he’s really and truly dead, he can’t do anything. By whom is another matter, but it has to be him also if he’s the only Man in the Sky) to real, material life again.
[Another question] But if he’s merely resuscitated, won’t he have to decay with the rest of the cosmos? Won’t he just have to die a regular person’s old-age death?
Not if he’s brought back to a kind of life that is beyond merely material. Part of what he has to prove is that the material is not all that there is. Earth will die in time, which means Death is still king. He has to rise to a post-material, super-material, super-nature as well as rising to where people can see, touch, and hear him. We’ll need a different word for it than resuscitation, because that won’t cut it.
[Last question] But listen to you: aren’t you just making all this up?
If I am, it’s all just another lie. If anyone just “makes it up” then let’s be agreed—it doesn’t count. But if the Man in the Sky self-reveals it all—if it really and truly happens, then it reveals THE LIE of this world to be just that—a lie—and the real truth is something wonderful and hope-filled that is no “fabrication of mercy” but rather a long-lost, long-denied truth.

Final Thought
Gervais has it backwards. The Man in the Sky is the reality and the teller of THE LIE may be no one to keep company with.

ON THE DISMISSAL OF THREE CHURCHES

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:41:01 -0700

It’s just a bit depressing. Like sending your kids and money off to a private school, you say goodbye and fear you’ll never see them again. All that investment of time, money and love walks out the door because they have dreams for a future that don’t figure YOU prominently in their plan. On the whole, you wonder whether you’d be a lot happier with them forsaking ambition and just going to work as cashiers at Albertsons—that way they could stay near home (or in it) and they would always be around. Isn’t this the dream—raising a family so you can all be together in peace, love and unity forever?
The Presbytery of San Joaquin dismissed three of its healthiest churches to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church last Thursday. It hurts; we are poorer and lonelier. But as much as it hurts, it is the right thing to do.
To talk about it as parents launching their kids off to college puts the best face on it. The reality is that our presbytery is the symptom-bearer of a family illness. All three of the departing churches have nothing but love for San Joaquin Presbytery; it’s the PCUSA they have to get away from.
The PCUSA drift—shaped by the last 2-and-a-half decades of General Assemblies—aggressively pursues the extremes of American liberalism at the price of a mass exodus of not-so-liberal church members. The PCUSA presently stands as one of the 4 or 5 most liberal denominations in all of world Christianity, and still it manages to reach left. We preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ: the call to salvation and reconciliation with God. The churches that do this well grow until their members can tolerate the denominational drift no further. This is the fruit of irretrievable progressivism—one of the only fruits that doesn’t do so well in the San Joaquin valley.
The local churches bring members into the pews; the denominational drift drives them out.
The Presbytery of San Joaquin is today poorer and smaller. We operated in a prayerful, conscionable manner in respecting the desire for these three churches to reaffiliate. In the fleet of the PCUSA, these were strong search-and-rescue vessels, not merely-viable, inflatable life-rafts (which by an large tend not to leave the mothership). We did not want them to go, but we honored their conscientious callings and dismissed them with the properties they built and still need to continue doing good ministry. We prayed prayers of blessing and affection over them after voting, the debates for which were neither heated nor contentious.
So we turn to the rest of the denomination with a collective shrug. If you think we should have fought them for their unity or their property, we think you’re nuts. We did as conscience and the model of Christ leads us; we gave sacrificially. This is the unfortunate price for being a part of a denomination that has loved leaning left—hard left—as persistently and as long as we have. The PCUSA doesn’t care a fig for church members who are equally confident—though less empowered—in their convictions regarding how Christians should be in 21st century America.
As Moderator of the Presbytery meeting, I want to make it clear: PCUSA, we did not fumble, you did.

You did this to us.

SAVING THE LIONS

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:43:47 -0700

At 93, my Dad is still an active member of the South Hill Lions Club in Spokane, Washington. Both my brother and I are unavoidably invited to Lions’ lunches whenever we visit. They crowd in to a very plain Fellowship Hall of a Methodist church—these glorious, aged Lions—men of high spirits, low-cholesterol diets, and skin like white elephant leather. They wear their oversized, theme-emblazoned name buttons like war medals, and a few wear those compact military/scout-type caps that resemble inverted canoes. Instead of a flowing mane, the leader of the pride has a satin (poly) sash arcing over his pot belly.
They come to order with a big, unison ROAR! (Okay, they don’t, but how cool would that be?) They stand and say the pledge of allegiance with their hands over their hearts. There is an opening prayer in Jesus’ name. They rib each other about how old they are and take dollar bills from each other over little rules they all keep forgetting.
We eat, and my brother and I talk with an old lion or two about how long they’ve known our Dad—which is usually over 70 years. After the dessert-block of cherry jello on a lettuce leaf with embedded walnuts and slathered sour cream—all perched on church dishes from the 50s, it’s down to business.
We’re introduced, and everyone is happy we are there. Talk immediately turns to the problem of getting some young people into the group. “We gotta get some young blood in here! We’re all a bunch of old fogies [not sic] now.” The leader asks for ideas and the place goes sadly silent. The token woman in her 30s makes a suggestion about one of their parks projects, but there is no spark—not like the spark of seeing these guys when they first get together.
Presbyterians and the Lions may have a lot in common. Both have been around a long time and happily host old-timers, who love to be there with each other. Both face the problem of “trying to draw in some younger people.” The bad news: it’s not going to happen. The good news: it doesn’t have to.
The strong lions of the Great Generation built these Lions’ Clubs as they saw fit. They worked hard to infuse them with energy, faith, teamwork, and patriotic fervor. Unfortunately, those qualities are more part of the members than the institution. They are not transferrable by the institution to the members. Even if the Lions brought in two dozen young men and women and could generate enthusiasm for Lions, it would not work because the core qualities did not originate with the new members.
A new generation has to recreate its own groups, clubs, and churches.
Old Lions bemoan the loss of a great dream—or at least a dream that was great in its time—and we should respect that sense of loss for their sake. Even so, if my own father wants me to join the Lions, as much as I love him, it’s going to be a very difficult sell.
When Presbyterians bemoan their former glories, we can sympathize. The denomination has done remarkable things with God’s help. But unless we let a new generation take the reins and re-institutionalize according to their own gifting under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, then we are doomed to fade away like the echoes of our roaring.
Good news: God will renew the church in his own way in his own time, and the sashes and badges may change, as may the songs at the opening of our gatherings, but the same Spirit that supplies us will supply the next Presbyterian wave, whatever it may be called.

Phoenix at 50?

Fri, 7 Aug 2009 05:51:52 -0700

I’m 50 today, and it’s been the most anxious birthday since turning, well, 40. At 40, I bemoaned in a sermon “nature’s tonsure,” i.e., my “permanently embedded flesh yarmulke” and the trouble of “flattening the spare tire.” Yesterday, I worked out a Boot Camp (a local workout class), did my mile in 8:55 (very good for me), and am in better shape than at 40. But I’ve also picked up my first pair of reading glasses (+150) and felt that should be ashamed that the song in my head as I awoke was Alice Cooper’s “Eighteen,” which was in my head when I awoke on my 18th birthday. I never dreamed that song would still be in my head now, much less that I would still like it.
I’m in a band called Randy and the Reruns, and I take great pride in the fact that we’re bad. Not James Brown bad, but Beaver Brown bad. Dave is the lead singer and he’s amazing; he has an absolutely photographic memory for lyrics, which is all we require in a singer. He’s shorter than average, and I’m taller than average, which makes us a great visual pair on vocals. Randy (band namesake) owns the PA and plays anything we need, usually bass or keyboard. He teaches music in a jr. High and wears wide suspenders. He’s from Michigan, so he knows all the great songs by the Stooges or Alice Cooper than I like to play, and he can get the rest of us started on anything. Eliot, the drummer, is director of buildings and grounds at our church. Intensely fascinating hippie background, but now looks like an extreme right wing construction worker. Like David Gilmour. Mike, who looks and sounds like Burl Ives, plays rhythm guitar. He is a kind, gentle, teddy bear of a man—a perfect antidote to any rock and roll pretense—the signature of our integrity as a bad band. I sing backing vocals and play lead guitar, and though I’m bad at both, the band keeps me encouraged just enough to keep coming to practice. We do old Stones stuff and 60s garage band hits (“Dirty Water” with lyrics about Oildale, etc.). I let no one at church know when or where we play. We don’t pursue gigs, and so far they don’t pursue us, but a few have come along. We played the Mall in Bakersfield 5 years ago—a sheer effort of nerve. I performed and sung “Yesterday” in front of, well, literally dozens of disinterested shoppers. We played some company’s picnic in an airplane hangar. A highlight was playing at an Episcopal church picnic where a woman near 90 clapped her hands on the side of her head as she shook it and mouthed in large, “NOOOO!” I turned at that moment to our drummer Eliot and beamed with genuine pride. We’re bad like Spinal Tap. We’re rock and roll. Come on, every pastor needs an acceptable vice.
So last night we played the first Street Fair (you know: crafts, kettle corn, inflatable bounce houses, etc.) in the great town of Shafter, CA. It’s a charming, small, rural Californian downtown. We played on a street corner as fair-goers walked by. Most of the people are hispanic, and I couldn’t be happier. If this were, say Michigan, kids would have yelled at us: “You SUCK!” “Get off the effing street!” “Don’t waste our electricity, you stupid wastes of space!” But not in Shafter. The crowd was very polite and gentle. One little boy with a corn lollipop (hard to describe, but it’s corn on the cob tarted up for children) stood almost at my side the entire show. I think he was just happy for being able to have a place “onstage.” I couldn’t love a fan more.
I guess if you’ve got a songbird somewhere in you—even if it’s an injured grackle—you gotta find a way to let it out and sing.
I remember a reading a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti when I was an undergrad called “A Phoenix at 50,” but I can’t find it today, even online. I remember thinking how I would love to read it when I turned 50. In the poem, he speaks of laying in a hammock watching the “sunlight blow through the treetops” of tall eucalyptus trees in Montecito. My first thought at 50 is that he was just a houseguest. No poets—not even laureates—make enough to live in Montecito. My second thought was just about beauty and gratitude. Since reading that poem in my 20s I’m sure I’ve watched sunlight blow through treetops thousands of times with a sense of coming back to life. The palms of Shafter—or even Oildale—work as well.
I wrote a book that was read by some friends and family that clearly didn’t meet my dreams of success (see The Shack), but it doesn’t matter. Like they say in Dead Poet’s Society, we’re all here for a very short time. It’s our role to try and contribute just a verse to the ongoing song. To have been here and not sung is too have wasted it.

Legislation Murders Real Compassion

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:11:26 -0700

1. Justice is Beautiful

We all have friends who love to remind us, in their own way, just how in-love they are with peace and justice. Upon further examination, we may discover that their peace and justice are "peace" and "justice." The words undergo a meaning-shift from eternal virtues to hot, loaded buzzwords for a particular political goals. You and I may think of Justice as meaning something like: everything as it ought to be or everything in its proper relationship to everything else. They are thinking of social progressivism and/or socialist economics. The idea of creation and creatures in relationships as God intends points toward biblical Shalom—something like peace, justice, love and completion combined—but this is not "peace" enough for some. They want "peace" only as they define it, and "justice" as can be measurably regulated.

2. Morale-killing Morality

The idea: Let's make an inflexible rule of love. Can this ever be a good idea? One remembers reports of over-detailed prenuptial agreements among the most-narcissistic, least-ought-to-be-married, Hollywood stars. Daily services are demanded, extravagant birthday or Christmas presents articulated to the dollar, luxury vacations--all of these prescriptions for fairness will fail to make love real. They may even preclude authentic love. The moment an act of love becomes legislated, it becomes law and is no longer love.

If you are obligated to give, the joy is undermined. To legislate preferred entitlements is patent distrust. Forget love.

Why would anyone demand a guarantee except out of utter distrust? On the other hand we can see how authentic trust enhances the joy of a relationship. When one abandons all distrust and expectation of entitlement, there is an open field of surprises and every good thing done can be taken as a grace. This requires a freedom of spirit that no law can provide.

Spontaneity itself is an expression of trust—it is the ability to let another be free to give or not give. To trust that love will provide sets one up for joy if little is expected, and disappointment if too much is expected.

Legislation can be an expression distrust and anti-spontaneity, and thereby anti-joy as well. Legislation consigns one to a kind of functional fatalism, where prescribed goods are given with perfect predictability, with rights to particular expectations.

The pastor's wife watched their son playing in the backyard with a neighbor. The boys were tug-o-warring with a toy firetruck. She goes out and guides her precious PK: "Son, what would Jesus do?" With angry resignation, he pushes the firetruck angrily at the face of the neighbor-boy and says, "Share the toys! Share the toys! Share the toys!"

3. Heartless "Compassion"

No heart, just guarantees. No surprises.

Guarantees are fine for purchasing pricey appliances or used cars, but in matter of the spirit, we're called to live by faith.

Liberals expect conservatives to support oppressive, wasteful systems that benefit them individually. They expect to see discrimination for all the ways they've defined and classified people—according to victimization, mostly—and they push legislation to guarantee an end to old boy favoritism.

Conservatives expect liberals to throw money down rat holes on fruitless whims. They expect to see an unfair re-privileging of formerly-marginalized people. They expect to be left out of the loop of benefits, discredited, and discarded with a sneering: You've had your turn.

As none invest trust, others will pay for reigning distrust. The loss of surprises means the eliminated possibilities of someone doing the right thing against expectations. And it's a shame, because those surprises are among the best things in this life. They are the most compelling testimonies, the sweetest witness, and the best evidence of a love that reaches into our lives from beyond our self-interests. To eliminate the chance and hope of such surprises is to write off the Holy Spirit, which is unforgivable.

Better (isn't it?) to live life beyond guarantees, above the fear of potential injustice, in that realm where the air is electric with possibility and hope?

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. (from Romans 8)

Dissent, Hatred, & Principles

Wed, 27 May 2009 15:02:26 -0700

Miss California, Carrie Prejean, said something very ordinary that is quickly becoming heroic—she refused to compromise the principles with which she was raised. She didn’t know it was heroic at the time. In fact, it seemed a fairly moderate—even pedestrian—response to a highly-loaded question. Her answer was run-of-the-mill in its predictability. But because she did not exploit her moment to positively champion homosexual marriage, she is vilified by pop culture. She and her way of thinking has been called “hateful,” which is just plain stupid.
Proposition 8 has held, and the PCUSA’s 08-B failed—so much for this year’s legislation. Still, no one is celebrating, largely because the legal win shouldn’t have been a win at all—it should have been status quo.
The two chief aspects of law are statecraft and soulcraft. Statecraft is about ordering behavior and keeping justice, soulcraft is about shaping our national identity and character as a people. The first is practical, the latter is principle. The principles we espouse determine our national character even more than their practical application, though we should always walk our talk. Example:
Remember when the national maximum speed limit was 55? Was it regulable? No. Then what good did it do and why was it passed? Having the 55 law said things about us as a people that needed to be said in the 70s:
1. We believe that auto safety and minimizing traffic fatalities is terribly important.
2. We believe in the wiser use of energy and fuel.
That is soulcraft. It is good to believe in these things and to uphold safety and energy conservation. Did I want to drive 55? No, and I didn’t but the presence of the 55 law articulated principles that were worthwhile. Speeding was my own issue, driven by my own impatience. There is goodness in the 55 law even though it is impractical. Without principle, we are left to self-gratification—everyone speeding, thinking that it’s normal and good.
This same worldview was satirized in Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay, “A Modest Proposal,” which offered a realistic solution to Ireland’s problems of overpopulation and starvation. Here’s the outline:
Go ahead and make more babies
Eat babies
Less population
Less starvation
Problem solved!
Swift satirized a rationalist/materialist worldview that has become the present, dominant, consciousness of popular culture. We live in a worldview that seems willing to jettison traditional morality for the sake of self-gratification. Principles tend to get in the way of our good times.
Without principles, it’s all means-to-an-end, cruel-to-be-kind rationalizations, law or no law.
Were he alive today, Swift might suggest that all beauty pageant contestants must be males in drag (Perez Hilton would be amused), and that population problems could be solved if only homosexual marriages were allowed, and all heterosexual marriages made illegal. That way, only homosexuals would be having legitimate (legal) relations, and heterosexuals would stop overpopulating the world with more heterosexuals. Problem solved.
But I have a feeling that as long as people like Carrie Prejean are out there, that’s just not going to happen.

Church/State Marriage Separation

Thu, 14 May 2009 10:59:35 -0700

 A Pastor friend of mine picks up the phone and is asked if his church allows weddings for non-members. He says yes, in fact they do allow the building to be used for non-members' weddings, but he must meet with the couple first. When the couple—two professional women in their 30s—arrives at the Pastor's office, he struggles to gently and kindly inform them that his denomination will not allow for same-sex ceremonies on church property, and that he would risk losing his ordination were he to perform such a ceremony. The women listen with pained expressions; they feel insulted, rejected, and judged. The Pastor spends the next hour biting his nails wondering whether or not he is liable for discrimination.

Twenty-five years ago, it was difficult to find a family in the congregation who knew a gay couple. Today, it's harder to find a family who does not know at least one. Here in California, Proposition 8 has brought the hot topic of same-sex marriage into every living room, and churches are expected to weigh-in on where and how they intend to act.

I have served the PCUSA for 25 years as an ordained pastor. The issue of same-sex relationships—specifically, in regard to ordination—has consumed our attention all of that time. Deadlocked in disagreement, we have lost fully half of our population since 1983, and key leaders have projected no solutions for the foreseeable future. The congregation I presently serve is seriously considering reaffiliation with another denomination—one that seems disinterested with sexual politics. But even if such a change is made, California may—as others have—legitimize same-sex marriages. Churches will still have to declare whether or not these marriages will be recognized as marriages, and the conflict will be embodied at new levels.

Surely all Christians—indeed, all religious people—decry the abuse and systematic belittlement of any people-group. Christians across the board have condemned violence against individuals based upon their sexual orientation, and surely all agree that the love and mercy of Jesus Christ is warranted wherever cruelty or hatred are manifest. Even my most conservative Presbyterian colleagues disdain the abuse of gays, lesbians, bisexual or transgendered people.

But it is questionable whether the refusal to grant unprecedented privileges (such as marriage or ordination) quite constitute abuse. For the Church to allow membership to gays and not ordination has been interpreted by many as relegating them to second class citizenship. Presbyterians—and perhaps protestants in general—are scandalously-divided by same-sex marriage issues, chiefly because they do not agree on what The Bible authoritatively says about homosexuality, nor on how that authority is to be applied to life in 21st century America.

The PCUSA has embodied the gay/straight conflict most fully in regard to the ordination of officers. The current nomenclature gives us "evangelicals" and "progressives." The former refers to those adhering to the traditional sexual standards and the latter to a new agenda. More than anything else, it has been a campaign of risky legislation and spirited, editorial rhetoric. While both sides suffer battle fatigue, the evangelicals are more likely to walk away to other denominations. The progressives approach victory largely through attrition.

The same-sex marriage question raises the temperature decisively, significantly changing the terms of "fidelity" in monogamous union. If gays can marry, then they can also practice fidelity within the covenant of marriage, thereby fulfilling present ordination standards. Evangelicals fear the courts taking the progressives' side and mandating what is for them unconscionable practices.

Perhaps the more significant question is how will the church-state relationship handle a re-definition of marriage, and on whose terms? For the state to tell the church what does or does not constitute marriage would be a drastic departure from the present—rather friendly—separation we now enjoy. It may soon be Christians (and other faith groups) crying for a separation of church and state.

Marriage has always been a religiously-defined entity, not only for Christianity, but for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and even Pagans. The boundaries and expectations placed upon it depend almost entirely upon religious standards. As such, there is not much meaning to a marriage of non-believers, except as it may endear them to a particular faith community and otherwise guarantee certain civil rights. Presbyterian pastors, as a rule, will not perform marriages for unbelievers. Presbyterian weddings are necessarily services of worship, which means, yes, it is about God.

The Church must retain the right to define marriage as it sees fit, according to scripture and in regard to no other worldly power. No court--including the Supreme Court--can tell a church how to be a church. Should courts take unconscionable liberties with definitions of marriage, then conscientious churches will be forced to either disregard the rulings and suffer penalties, or they will have to revise all church documents, constitutions, and orders of worship to replace the word “marriage” with the terms like "Holy Matrimony" or “Christian Marriage.”

It is inevitable: either church or state is going to have to get out of the marriage business.

Perhaps we need to take a hint from President Obama's inaugural address, wherein he acknowledged that we are "a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers." This last group may change the game entirely. It may be time for the state to get out of the marriage business entirely, allowing only for "civil unions" as the least common denominator to regulate the rights of united couples. This would certainly present a level playing field for all couples of whatever orientation, and would avoid infringing upon the church's right to define marriage as it sees fit.

Same-sex couples could be legally united, granting them the rights and privileges of civil union, and churches would remain free to make up their own minds as to whether or not these unions constitute marriages. That is their own business.

The State cannot—and must not try—to define marriage any further than it already has. It is tantamount to the state prescribing details relating to baptisms, bar mitzvahs, or confirmations. American government needs to turn marriage back to religious groups entirely, and institute civil unions for whomever is still interested.