As a follow-up to my recent blog post, Unconditional, I emailed Dr. Marvin Olasky to ask him if there was some sort of list or clearinghouse for the type of early American-modeled, faith-based charities he described in The Tragedy of American Compassion. Dr. Olasky was gracious enough answer my email the very next day. After telling me that he had read my blog post, and complimenting my comments, he forwarded this link to Acton Institute's Samaritan Guide, an online guide that provides detailed information on hundreds of private charities around the country. This unique charities rating resource is intended to be a reference for charities and donors alike, encouraging good practices and prudent investments. In my email to Dr. Olasky I had expressed disappointment in my efforts to locate a faith-based charity here in the Portland area that followed seven principles of effective compassion:
Affiliation
Bonding
Categorization
Discernment
Employment
Freedom
God (Spirituality)
Alas, after reviewing the Samaritan Guide I remain frustrated as there seemed to be very few charities in the Portland area, or even in the state of Oregon, listed in the guide. I will have to continue my search, I suppose, by contacting local organizations and asking myself how closely if at all they adhere to those seven principles.
Searching the Samaritan Guide, and further, the Acton Institute web site, I did find this YouTube film posted on their blog, entitled, How Not to Help the Poor. Just click on the arrow in the middle of the viewing screen.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
How would Jesus Vote?
Would Jesus Be a Democrat or a Republican?
I encountered this question recently in a film for Church small groups, produced, written and directed by Lake Oswego's own Dan Merchant, called Lord, Save Us From Your Followers. The question was posed to passersby, street interviews being a large part of the film. Some of the respondents said, "Democrat," and some said, "Republican," but by far the most popular answer--at least as shown by Merchant--was, "He wouldn't care." A few who gave this answer seemed to breath it with a hint of sadness, brows knit with feeling, as though the question itself betrayed an uncharitable intent by the interrogator.
Biblically speaking the question is not so much uncharitable as incoherent, because of course if Jesus were once again here on this earth in physical form, Democrats and Republicans, Socialists and Libertarians, Communists and Anarchists, and adherents of every other political party, ideology or system of thought would either fall at His feet in worship or otherwise be forced to acknowledge that He is the final and complete ruler of the Earth. The time for voting will have ended forever.
A perfectly reasonable question, however, is, "what candidate or legislative policies can we vote for that will most closely align with God's mandates?" This question is not only reasonable, it's indispensable. But whether from Biblical illiteracy, or ignorance of issues and policies, many Christians are not asking this question of themselves. Even for those who are both Biblically and politically informed, it can be challenging to answer and almost always a matter of trade-offs. But then most of life's problems are. This is where Scriptural understanding of degrees of both sin and righteousness play a crucial role: without it we are helpless in weighing competing goods against each other, or discerning the lesser of two evils.
These choices may not be as difficult as they may seem at first blush, however. What can appear as an overwhelming task if one were to have to examine the minutia of each and every policy of a given candidate and submit those many details to Scriptural scrutiny, can be simplified greatly by looking at the underlying philosophy of government itself that competing candidates hold. Christian apologist Greg Koukl has a good article on this which you can access here. This reduces the argument to one of questioning what is the Biblical role of government. Koukl makes the argument--convincingly I would say--that the New Testament role of government is quite limited to that of justice (the punishment of criminals) and equity (that it should treat its citizens equally and fairly) quoting Romans 13:3,4
So if the Biblical view of government is one of limited influence, what is the non-Biblical alternative with which we are most commonly presented? Allow me the conceit of quoting myself from a post on my political blog which I wrote at the beginning of this year:
To be sure there are definite single issues that are defining as coinciding with the Biblical and Christian worldview--the sanctity and dignity of human life in all its stages and conditions; the sanctity and uniqueness of monogamous marriage; the preeminence of moral obligation to God over obligation to the state--and those should certainly be taken into account. But in the ambiguous issues we can use this understanding to more easily determine the Biblical way to vote: is the underlying political philosophy of the candidate one of limited government, constrained in its sphere of authority, or is it a philosophy of government as panacea in which almost every part of human life it can play a constructive, benevolent, even parental role?
I encountered this question recently in a film for Church small groups, produced, written and directed by Lake Oswego's own Dan Merchant, called Lord, Save Us From Your Followers. The question was posed to passersby, street interviews being a large part of the film. Some of the respondents said, "Democrat," and some said, "Republican," but by far the most popular answer--at least as shown by Merchant--was, "He wouldn't care." A few who gave this answer seemed to breath it with a hint of sadness, brows knit with feeling, as though the question itself betrayed an uncharitable intent by the interrogator.
Biblically speaking the question is not so much uncharitable as incoherent, because of course if Jesus were once again here on this earth in physical form, Democrats and Republicans, Socialists and Libertarians, Communists and Anarchists, and adherents of every other political party, ideology or system of thought would either fall at His feet in worship or otherwise be forced to acknowledge that He is the final and complete ruler of the Earth. The time for voting will have ended forever.
His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. (Revelation 19:12-16 ESV)
A perfectly reasonable question, however, is, "what candidate or legislative policies can we vote for that will most closely align with God's mandates?" This question is not only reasonable, it's indispensable. But whether from Biblical illiteracy, or ignorance of issues and policies, many Christians are not asking this question of themselves. Even for those who are both Biblically and politically informed, it can be challenging to answer and almost always a matter of trade-offs. But then most of life's problems are. This is where Scriptural understanding of degrees of both sin and righteousness play a crucial role: without it we are helpless in weighing competing goods against each other, or discerning the lesser of two evils.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12 ESV)
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness... (2 Timothy 3:16 ESV)
These choices may not be as difficult as they may seem at first blush, however. What can appear as an overwhelming task if one were to have to examine the minutia of each and every policy of a given candidate and submit those many details to Scriptural scrutiny, can be simplified greatly by looking at the underlying philosophy of government itself that competing candidates hold. Christian apologist Greg Koukl has a good article on this which you can access here. This reduces the argument to one of questioning what is the Biblical role of government. Koukl makes the argument--convincingly I would say--that the New Testament role of government is quite limited to that of justice (the punishment of criminals) and equity (that it should treat its citizens equally and fairly) quoting Romans 13:3,4
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.That this sounds remarkably similar to the opening paragraph of the U.S. Constitution--establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare-- is, I think, no accident but was rather by careful intent by the founders of our country.
So if the Biblical view of government is one of limited influence, what is the non-Biblical alternative with which we are most commonly presented? Allow me the conceit of quoting myself from a post on my political blog which I wrote at the beginning of this year:
Implicit in their speeches is the idea that government is a force for good, and if government, through the exercise of "progressive" ideals, is good, then more government is better. Implicit, too, is the idea that human problems can be--not ameliorated, but solved--through the wise and progressive application of government. Disease, poverty, ignorance, bigotry--perhaps even loneliness--are all human problems that can be eradicated by this redefinition of humanity and the politics of meaning. (You can access the entire post here).
To be sure there are definite single issues that are defining as coinciding with the Biblical and Christian worldview--the sanctity and dignity of human life in all its stages and conditions; the sanctity and uniqueness of monogamous marriage; the preeminence of moral obligation to God over obligation to the state--and those should certainly be taken into account. But in the ambiguous issues we can use this understanding to more easily determine the Biblical way to vote: is the underlying political philosophy of the candidate one of limited government, constrained in its sphere of authority, or is it a philosophy of government as panacea in which almost every part of human life it can play a constructive, benevolent, even parental role?
First, supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings should be made on behalf of all men: for kings and rulers in positions of responsibility, so that our common life may be lived in peace and quiet, with a proper sense of God and of our responsibility to him for what we do with our lives. (1 Timothy 2:1,2 Phillips translation)
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Unconditional
In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" (Acts 20:35 ESV)
I can no longer remember when I first heard the phrase, "unconditional love." It seems like it might have been some time in the 60s or 70s -- I know it was nothing I heard as a child. I do know that for quite a while it seemed a perfectly acceptable usage to me, and filled me with the same sense of warm fuzzies that others appeared to get from the phrase. I still affirm the idea that God's love for us is separate from any merit or deservedness on our part.
Of late, however, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the phrase, and more so upon my reading of Marvin Olasky's book, The Tragedy of American Compassion. (Olasky holds a PhD in American culture, is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and is editor-in-chief of World magazine.) In 1989 and 1990 Olasky, funded by a grant from the Heritage Foundation, researched the history of American charity to the poor, from colonial times to present, at the Library of Congress, research upon which he based his book. He outlines the early American model of compassion, and describes the surprisingly successful programs of the time, run almost exclusively by religious organizations. He identifies seven "marks of compassion" which characterized this early American model and were essential elements of its achievement: affiliation, bonding, categorization, discernment, employment, freedom, and God.
To quickly define these terms, affiliation focused on restoring the broken relationships with family, church and community of the needy. Bonding was required by volunteers with those whom they helped, in the true spirit of the word "compassion": to suffer with. Charities of the day carefully categorized their applicants between those "worthy of relief" (children, widows, those able and willing to work, and those unable to work due to disease or handicap), and the "unworthy, not entitled to relief" (the "shiftless and intemperate" who were unwilling to work). Discernment was then thoughtfully exercised in the type, degree and duration of aid given with the goal, for all for whom it was possible, to secure employment, and thereby restore (or perhaps for the first time secure) self-sufficiency, dignity, and freedom. And all was done in the name and to the glory of God.
All of this occurred during a time when American society endorsed the classic Judeo/Christian view of fallen man and sovereign God. But with the advent of, first, liberal Protestant theology, and later, secular/humanist worldview that denied the fallen nature of man and rather affirmed a natural goodness in human nature that would assert itself once social and physical necessities were met, a new template of compassion assumed American charity. Almost all of the marks of compassion that had once governed American charity were abandoned, and with them the role of government aid eclipsed that of the faith-based organizations--and with it the success they had experienced. In effect, "bad charity" drove out "good charity". The zenith of this movement was seen in the 1960s with the passing of unprecedented welfare entitlements and the professionalization of social work. The decades of the 1970s and 1980s saw the devaluation of marriage, a horrifying rise in unwed childbirth, and the formation of a multi-generational underclass dependent on government largess. True, no one was starving anymore, a basic level of physical need was met, but the social and moral aspects of poverty, and the sheer numbers of the dependent class grew exponentially.
Perhaps the worst tragedy is that this model of compassion, stripped of affiliation, bonding, categorization, discernment, and employment, has infected many faith-based efforts of charity, with results that early American charity pioneers warned of when first establishing their model of compassion. Consider this excerpt from the book:
Even evangelical programs of charity, done in the name of Christ, if devoid of the other marks of compassion in the early American model, are left only with freedom. But freedom to do what--roam the streets? Abuse drugs and alcohol? Continue to abandon one's children? Is this really demonstrating the "unconditional" love of God?
Consider another excerpt from the book which illustrates a different sort of contemporary faith-based charity organization that embraces the early American model of compassion:
So perhaps this "tough love" is in reality a better expression of God's "unconditional" love than merely handing out food and clothing with no attendant personal responsibility required. And perhaps my own unease with the phrase "unconditional love" is in reality a disappointment with so many contemporary Christian charity programs that seem to have forsaken the classical view of compassion--that of suffering with--for the far easier, guilt-assuaging and self-congratulatory model of indiscriminate giving of food, clothing, or money.
For anyone considering faith-based giving or volunteer work, I urge you to read, and be challenged by The Tragedy of American Compassion.
I can no longer remember when I first heard the phrase, "unconditional love." It seems like it might have been some time in the 60s or 70s -- I know it was nothing I heard as a child. I do know that for quite a while it seemed a perfectly acceptable usage to me, and filled me with the same sense of warm fuzzies that others appeared to get from the phrase. I still affirm the idea that God's love for us is separate from any merit or deservedness on our part.
Of late, however, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the phrase, and more so upon my reading of Marvin Olasky's book, The Tragedy of American Compassion. (Olasky holds a PhD in American culture, is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and is editor-in-chief of World magazine.) In 1989 and 1990 Olasky, funded by a grant from the Heritage Foundation, researched the history of American charity to the poor, from colonial times to present, at the Library of Congress, research upon which he based his book. He outlines the early American model of compassion, and describes the surprisingly successful programs of the time, run almost exclusively by religious organizations. He identifies seven "marks of compassion" which characterized this early American model and were essential elements of its achievement: affiliation, bonding, categorization, discernment, employment, freedom, and God.
To quickly define these terms, affiliation focused on restoring the broken relationships with family, church and community of the needy. Bonding was required by volunteers with those whom they helped, in the true spirit of the word "compassion": to suffer with. Charities of the day carefully categorized their applicants between those "worthy of relief" (children, widows, those able and willing to work, and those unable to work due to disease or handicap), and the "unworthy, not entitled to relief" (the "shiftless and intemperate" who were unwilling to work). Discernment was then thoughtfully exercised in the type, degree and duration of aid given with the goal, for all for whom it was possible, to secure employment, and thereby restore (or perhaps for the first time secure) self-sufficiency, dignity, and freedom. And all was done in the name and to the glory of God.
All of this occurred during a time when American society endorsed the classic Judeo/Christian view of fallen man and sovereign God. But with the advent of, first, liberal Protestant theology, and later, secular/humanist worldview that denied the fallen nature of man and rather affirmed a natural goodness in human nature that would assert itself once social and physical necessities were met, a new template of compassion assumed American charity. Almost all of the marks of compassion that had once governed American charity were abandoned, and with them the role of government aid eclipsed that of the faith-based organizations--and with it the success they had experienced. In effect, "bad charity" drove out "good charity". The zenith of this movement was seen in the 1960s with the passing of unprecedented welfare entitlements and the professionalization of social work. The decades of the 1970s and 1980s saw the devaluation of marriage, a horrifying rise in unwed childbirth, and the formation of a multi-generational underclass dependent on government largess. True, no one was starving anymore, a basic level of physical need was met, but the social and moral aspects of poverty, and the sheer numbers of the dependent class grew exponentially.
Perhaps the worst tragedy is that this model of compassion, stripped of affiliation, bonding, categorization, discernment, and employment, has infected many faith-based efforts of charity, with results that early American charity pioneers warned of when first establishing their model of compassion. Consider this excerpt from the book:
Shortly before Christmas 1989, a Washington Post reporter, Stephen Buckley, interviewed eight men who were living in Northwest Washington in a tent made by tying a bright blue tarpaulin over a grate that spewed hot air. Buckley noted that the men had sleeping bags, gloves, scarves, and boots, and lots of food: "Party trays with chicken and turnkey. Fruit. Boxes of crackers. Bags of popcorn. Canned goods. All donated by passersby." Some of the recipients probably were fathers, but they were not spending Christmas with their children.The unavoidable question presented by these stories is: do these indiscriminate gifts really help these people, or are they rather making things worse by enabling them to remain "homeless"?
Buckley also visited four men and two women who were camping on a heating grate on the eastern edge of the Ellipse, just south of the White House. The heat, along with "the generosity of private citizens who bring them food and clothes every night," meant that the campers "don't worry much about surviving the cold," Buckley reported. Indeed, visitors throughout the evening dropped off supplies; one woman brought fruit, nuts, and two dollars; three men brought a platter of cold cuts; and two other men hot chocolate, blankets, gloves, sweaters, and socks. One of the campers, a forty-one-year-old man who has been "largely homeless" for eleven years, noted that "the majority of clothes we have here now were dropped off by persons who were walking by and saw us here. They just thought they could bring something that would be helpful to us."
Even evangelical programs of charity, done in the name of Christ, if devoid of the other marks of compassion in the early American model, are left only with freedom. But freedom to do what--roam the streets? Abuse drugs and alcohol? Continue to abandon one's children? Is this really demonstrating the "unconditional" love of God?
Consider another excerpt from the book which illustrates a different sort of contemporary faith-based charity organization that embraces the early American model of compassion:
Jim and Anne Pierson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for example, bought a large, old house named it House of His Creation, and over seven years provided shelter to two hundred pregnant women. The Piersons learned that the family structure of their home was crucial, because most the women who stayed with them had lacked a good family life. They had never seen a healthy mother-father or husband-wife relationship, and so had become cynics about marriage. Some of the residents at House of His Creation, freed from peer pressure to single-parent and able to see the importnace of dual-parenting, chose to place for adoption. Most also began thinking about marriage in a new healthy way.
The Pierson's next step was to act as catalysts for the development of family-base maternity homes. They formed the Christian Maternity Home/Single Parent Association (CMHA), which has thirty-two member homes, each with two house parents and six to eight pregnant women in residence. At one CMHA home, Sparrow House in Baltimore, houseparents draw each new resident into family life--for some, this is the only time in their lives that they have lived with a "mother" and a "father." The houseparents help each resident adjust to rules and responsibilities that may be new and hard to take at first. Since many of the young women have come from undisciplined lives, they are learning--maybe for the first time--to live with structure. They also learn to take their spiritual needs seriously. Sparrow House, like other CMHA homes, accepts needy women from any religious background, but the program's unapologetic base in Christian teaching is reminiscent of many in the late nineteenth century...The housemother spends many hours with the teenage mother but she does not assume babysitting responsibilities; if a teenage mother is desperate, the housemother takes over for a short time but only in exchange for doing laundry for the household or mowing the lawn. House-parents need to have inner strength and conviction that the child will be better off in the long run by maintaining a hands-off situation. They have to let the child cry longer than they would let him cry. The have to let his diaper be wetter than they would allow. The teenager has to learn that it is her responsibility. Christian Family Care Agency's tough love leads about half of the teenage mothers to realize that for both their good and their children's, they should choose adoption; the other half raise their children with a new appreciation of marriage and an awareness of their own limitations. Crucially, that knowledge has come in the safe environment of a family home, not it the dangerous terrain of a solitary apartment filled with the sounds of a crying child and a tired angry parent.
So perhaps this "tough love" is in reality a better expression of God's "unconditional" love than merely handing out food and clothing with no attendant personal responsibility required. And perhaps my own unease with the phrase "unconditional love" is in reality a disappointment with so many contemporary Christian charity programs that seem to have forsaken the classical view of compassion--that of suffering with--for the far easier, guilt-assuaging and self-congratulatory model of indiscriminate giving of food, clothing, or money.
For anyone considering faith-based giving or volunteer work, I urge you to read, and be challenged by The Tragedy of American Compassion.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Heart
But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. (Romans 10: 8-10 ESV)
The word "heart", in Western culture, in its symbolic or metaphorical sense, is used to mean the seat of emotions, or as a graphic substitute for love. Think of all the chintzy T-shirts, bumper stickers, baseball caps and various other miscellany of pop society that replaces the word "love" in the declaration of the object of affection (New York city, a baseball team, basset hounds, ad infinitum) with a simple greeting card picture of a red heart. But is this sense--the heart as the seat of the emotions, the one implied by the above verse? What does the Bible mean when it so often uses the word "heart"--or at least what is translated in English as such? The seat of the intellect? A combination of intellect and emotion? Something different, such as inner conviction?
The answer is no...and yes. No as to any one as being the answer, yes as to all of them--and more. Here is a partial list of the different meanings to the word heart implied by various scriptural texts:
The above list only begins to touch the depth of meaning in Scripture with regard to its use of the word heart. Here and here are a couple of links to online Bible dictionary resources for further study.
Familiar words can sometimes present a trap in that our eye passes over them without really engaging our thought. Whatever meaning lies closest to our consciousness--usually that which is culturally prevalent--is the one we "plug in" to the context. Let me, then, humbly suggest an alternate word to at least ponder; that one may temporarily substitute for heart to strip away the contemporary Western meaning and its limited implications, one that might help us grasp the more complete significance of its intent: essence. It denotes the inner, spiritual aspect of human nature, but also the all-encompassing mix of intellect, emotion, conviction, personality and identity. In such a thought experiment, the framing text above would read:
Give it some thought, and perhaps temporarily substitute a word of your own. My point is not a call for an alternate translation; just a clearer understanding of the meaning of the text.
The word "heart", in Western culture, in its symbolic or metaphorical sense, is used to mean the seat of emotions, or as a graphic substitute for love. Think of all the chintzy T-shirts, bumper stickers, baseball caps and various other miscellany of pop society that replaces the word "love" in the declaration of the object of affection (New York city, a baseball team, basset hounds, ad infinitum) with a simple greeting card picture of a red heart. But is this sense--the heart as the seat of the emotions, the one implied by the above verse? What does the Bible mean when it so often uses the word "heart"--or at least what is translated in English as such? The seat of the intellect? A combination of intellect and emotion? Something different, such as inner conviction?
The answer is no...and yes. No as to any one as being the answer, yes as to all of them--and more. Here is a partial list of the different meanings to the word heart implied by various scriptural texts:
The center of human rational-spiritual nature (I Cor. 7: 37, Rom. 6: 17)
The seat of love (I Tim. 1: 5)
The seat of hate (Lev. 19: 17)
The center of thought: it knows (Duet. 29:4), it understands (Acts 16: 14), it reflects (Luke 2: 19), it estimates (Prov. 12:25)
The center of feelings and affections: of joy (Isa. 65: 14), of pain (John 16: 6), of despair (Eccl. 2: 20), of fear (Psa. 143: 4)
The center of morality and conscience (Rom. 2: 15, I John 3: 19-21)
The seat of human fallen nature (Jer. 17: 9)
The dwelling place of Christ in us (Eph. 3: 17), and of the Holy Spirit (II Cor. 1:22)
The above list only begins to touch the depth of meaning in Scripture with regard to its use of the word heart. Here and here are a couple of links to online Bible dictionary resources for further study.
Familiar words can sometimes present a trap in that our eye passes over them without really engaging our thought. Whatever meaning lies closest to our consciousness--usually that which is culturally prevalent--is the one we "plug in" to the context. Let me, then, humbly suggest an alternate word to at least ponder; that one may temporarily substitute for heart to strip away the contemporary Western meaning and its limited implications, one that might help us grasp the more complete significance of its intent: essence. It denotes the inner, spiritual aspect of human nature, but also the all-encompassing mix of intellect, emotion, conviction, personality and identity. In such a thought experiment, the framing text above would read:
But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your essence." (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your essence that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the essence one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
Give it some thought, and perhaps temporarily substitute a word of your own. My point is not a call for an alternate translation; just a clearer understanding of the meaning of the text.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Remembering Tom
For those of you who are unaware, I had to move my mother into an adult care home recently. Nan and I (mostly Nan) just finalized the sale of her double-wide mobile home, and today, as I was going through some of her things in preparation to storing them up in my attic, I came upon the eulogy I gave for my half-brother Tom, November 22, 1996. My mother had printed it out and put it in a plastic sleeve with a cover sheet on which was printed a graphic of a dove, the words, "In Loving Memory", and to which she pasted the tiny notice from the Oregonian obituary page of his death and funeral services at Lighthouse Mission Church in Portland.
I hadn't read this since I spoke these words almost twelve years ago, but was once again moved by the emotion and sentiment that inspired me to write it, and so thought it fitting to share it here.
Tom Mitchell was my brother. Our father was a preacher, so I guess it was natural that we both wanted to follow that same path. For me it was a stroll that ultimately led to a cul-de-sac, but for Tom it was a journey that lasted most of his life.
Aside from the fact that Tom and I had different mothers, our upbringings were quite different. Throughout his adolescence, Tom was raised by our father's sister and her husband, Aunt Flora and Uncle Burl, during which time, if I correctly recall my brother's stories, he rebelled against all things religious. He did, however, discover athletics and, with some distinction, ran the high hurdles and played football in high school. Once, when I saw among his things an old slide-rule in a worn leather case, he confided in me that his mathematical abilities were such that Lockheed had offered him a full scholarship to M.I.T. But professional athletics and aerospace engineering were not to be for Tom: when he converted from that most common religion of American adolescent males--an "angry young man"--to Christianity, Tom knew that the ministry was to be his life.
I know little of the beginnings of his ministry. I know he didn't attend Bible school or college of any kind. As to how or where he acquired his considerable preaching abilities, I'm at a loss, other than the belief that it was Tom's gift from God. I remember him mentioning from time to time that he worked for a short while at the paper mill in Moss Point, Mississippi where he had lived with Aunt Flora and Uncle Burl. But I presume that after that he began to preach and through whatever opportunities were afforded him by local pastors, and by virtue of his ardor and drive, never looked back.
My first memory of Tom was of when I was perhaps five years old. Tom would have been 21 or 22 then. He seemed huge to me, maybe because he was almost half a foot taller than our father; and with his bright red hair, and broad smile, and abundant catalogue of funny voices and faces, I thought he was the most wonderful person I had ever met. I loved him almost more than I could bear. When I was seven he taught me to play chess...chess to a seven year old: how he had the patience I will never know. But from that moment on I would beg him unmercifully to play with me. He always beat me horribly, of course. Even after we were grown, I only recall capturing his king once. But I always came back for more. I was playing with my big brother: that was payment enough for the most grim defeat.
When I was eight I took a long trip with Tom. We traveled from Yuma, Arizona to Dallas, Texas where the Church of God (the organization with which he was ordained) held its general assembly. After a week there, we went on to my Aunt Flora's and Uncle Burl's house in Moss Point, Mississippi where I was introduced to traditional Southern afternoon "dinner" (supper is the evening meal in the South) of black-eyed peas with ham hocks and cornbread sticks. And finally we went on to Tampa, Florida where I met Tom's very gracious mother, and my sister Susan. Again I fell madly in love.
When I was nine my sister Joanne came to visit, and I discovered that my brother Tom's singing was a family trait. She was for many years a member and often soloist in the Tampa Metropolitan Opera. She sang on my father's local Sunday afternoon TV show and the switchboard at the station was flooded with calls for the rest of the day. They continued to receive calls for weeks after from people wanting to know when she would sing again. Now I had two sisters and a brother to love.
Two years later I took another trip with Tom; this time to travel with him on the evangelistic field. We drove each other a little bit crazy: I was a slightly precocious and insufferably obnoxious child away from his parents, and he was a bachelor, by now set in his ways and used to coming and going as he pleased. But during the day we golfed together and played board games and practiced the guitar. And every night at church I would sing and "testify"--usually anecdotes and metaphorical stories I had plagiarized...from Tom, of course--and then sit and glory in the fire and passion of my bother's preaching. Never did he fail to move me. Never was he clumsy or tongue-tied. Night after night he wove elegant tapestries of words, sermons like symphonies in which each movement and variation built to a final crescendo of emotion. When, a few years after that, I began to preach, it was Tom, not my father, who was my ideal and pattern.
Tom was never to marry. There were a few close calls, but the demands and rigors of his first love--the ministry--always seemed to conflict with courtship. I believe he would have been a wonderful father. He seemed to me to be much better with children than I am. I remember how happy he was when my sons were born, how he indulged them and took interest in their most minor achievements. But if he had no children of his own, he certainly had no lack of surrogates. Of all the children in all the churches I ever visited with Tom, I never saw one who did not seem drawn to him or was not amused by the same easy manner of his that won me over as a child.
For many years Tom was like a wandering nomad, possessing only the few modest items he could pack into the truck of his car, relying on the hospitality of the churches at which he preached to provide him a bed. It was often a lonely exhausting life and at times an exercise in deprivation. He had no security, no savings, no retirement fund, no insurance, and no mate with whom to share his life. But always he was meeting people, helping people, reaching out, lifting up. My brother probably had more fiends than anyone I've ever met. And finally things began to get a little better for him. Finally, here in Portland, he found a place to plant at least one or two roots; a place where he could travel from and come back to. He had a long tenure as assistant pastor of Peninsular Open Bible Church under pastor Pearl Short. And later, after more very hard times, Tom returned to Portland and found his final home at Lighthouse Mission Church. It was a homecoming in more ways than one for Tom, like a great circle in the arc of his life; Dan Wold (the pastor of Lighthouse Mission Church) tells me that it was with his grandfather, dear Brother DeVrees--a wonderful man of God whom many of us, including me, remember with great affection--it was with Brother DeVrees that Tom got his start in evangelism.
I witnessed a change in Tom as he finally settled here. The life of a revivalist is a troublesome one, especially at the minimalist scope at which Tom operated--a life with which I am well acquainted, for I lived it with my father and mother throughout my adolescence. It is often filled with concern verging on desperation. Where is your next meeting? How will you get there? What do you do when a church cancels a two-week revival two days before you were supposed to start, and your checking account is empty? I won't bore you with Tom's financial troubles other than to say they were many and seemingly endless. The many years he spent on the road had taken its toll. But here in Portland, at Lighthouse Mission Church, finally he could begin to relax. He could experience the small routines that for most of us comprise the bulk of life. And he got to experience a new kind of travel: one different from the scrabbling-for-survival kind he had done in that past. Now he was able to go places he had only dreamed of before. I know he loved going to those far-off places--Kenya, Israel, Greece, Hong Kong--he always brought gifts back to all of us, and told us about the sights he had seen, the people he had met. And best of all, he had a place to come back to, a home in which to unpack his bags, shelves upon which he arrange his mementos.
Perhaps the most poignant fact of Tom's life was the love he engendered in those around him. Not just his family, though we did indeed love him--more than we can express--but also the overwhelming number of people he affected. I am proud of my brother that the measure of his life is not his possessions--for he had almost none; nor his industry--for though often a craftsman, that was not his vocation; or even his artistry--for though he did write songs and sermons, that was not his most noble achievement. The truest measure of my brother's life is the hundreds of people who knew and cared for him, and whose lives were enriched by his fellowship. That is a legacy that will far outlive possessions, or structures, or artistry. It is a legacy embedded in the lives of those whom he touched. It is a legacy of life. It is a legacy of love.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Wedding
Yesterday I had the honor and privilege of performing the wedding ceremony of my oldest son, Nigel, and his bride Janelle. I was quite moved when he asked me: first to be so considered by him, and second as it is a continuation of a tradition started by my father who performed my wedding ceremony.
I'm posting the ceremony here as a way of sharing my joy with anyone who wishes to read it. The greeting and vows are a slight reworking of traditional vows. The prayer and message were written by me.
Greeting
Dear friends, out of affection for Nigel Mitchell and Janelle Clark we have gathered together to witness and bless their mutual vows which will unite them in marriage. To this moment they bring the fullness of their hearts as a treasure to share with one another. They bring the dreams which bind them together. They bring that particular personality and spirit which is uniquely their own, and out of which will grow the reality of their life together. We rejoice with them as the outward symbol of an inward union of hearts, a union, blessed by God, created by friendship, respect and love.
No person should attend a wedding without giving thanks to God for the sacrament of marriage, and renewing in his heart the vows that are being taken for the first time by others. No person should leave without doing that for which he came..... praying that God's blessing may truly rest upon this man and this woman all the days of their life together. As you pray, so may you also receive a blessing. And so, let us pray:
Heavenly Father, as we have gathered to witness and celebrate the union of Nigel and Janelle in holy matrimony we pray your blessing and goodwill on their lives; we pray that your grace would envelop them, that your providence would protect them, that your word would guide them, and that your love would inspire them. This we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Wedding message
Marriage has existed throughout human history, and whether we take the language of Genesis to be literal or figurative, the principle is the same: that God himself determined that it was not good for man to be alone. "So God created man in his own image; male and female he created them." Countless centuries later, Jesus clarified God's intentions and authenticated a Christian ethic of marriage which has informed Western Civilization's view, not just of the sacredness of marriage, but the responsibility and accountability of men and the dignity and humanity of women, elevated from the status of chattel characterized by so many pre-christian and non-christian cultures. In the Gospel of Matthew we read that Jesus said, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh?' So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."
Fundamental to this Christian ethic is that, rather than property acquisition, social status, or business or political alliance, marriage is to be based on love. The apostle Paul put it this way in his letter to the Ephesians: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church..."
It's fitting that this, perhaps most radical idea of all--that this life-long commitment and bonding of family should find its source in mutual love--is the one we most revere. It fuels our stories--our literature, films, poetry, music--indeed almost all of our art. And it's why, today, we have gathered to celebrate this declaration of love, and these vows of commitment.
Wedding vows: Nigel & Janelle face each other join right hands
(to the Groom) Do you, Nigel Mitchell, in the presence of God,family and friends, promise to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in adversity, this woman whose right hand you now hold? Do you promise to be to her in all things a true and faithful husband, to be devoted to her, and to her only, as long as life shall last? And do you take her to be your lawful, wedded wife, as long as you both shall live? (He answers “I do.”)
(to the Bride) Do you, Janelle Clark, in the presence of God, family and friends, promise to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in adversity, this man whose right hand you now hold? Do you promise to be to him in all things a true and faithful wife, to be devoted to him, and to him only, as long as life shall last? Do you take him to be your lawfully, wedded husband, as long as you both shall live? (She answers, “I do.”)
Ring vows
Let us pray. Bless, O Lord, the giving and receiving of these rings. May Nigel and Janelle abide in Your peace and grow in their knowledge of Your presence through their loving union. May the seamless circle of these rings become the symbol of their enduring love and serve to remind them of the holy covenant into which they have entered today to be faithful, loving, and kind to each other. Dear God, may they live in Your grace and be forever true to this union. Amen.
(to the groom) Nigel, repeat after me: "Janelle, I give you this ring as a symbol of our vows, ...and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you. ...In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. ...With this ring, I thee wed."
(to the bride) Janelle, repeat after me: "Nigel, I give you this ring as a symbol of our vows, ...and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you. ...In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. ...With this ring, I thee wed."
Pronouncement
Nigel and Janelle, you are now man and wife according to the witness of this assembly and the law of Oregon. Become one, Fulfill your promises. Love and serve the Lord. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. You may kiss the bride.
Presentation of the couple
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you mister and misses Nigel Mitchell!
I'm posting the ceremony here as a way of sharing my joy with anyone who wishes to read it. The greeting and vows are a slight reworking of traditional vows. The prayer and message were written by me.
Greeting
Dear friends, out of affection for Nigel Mitchell and Janelle Clark we have gathered together to witness and bless their mutual vows which will unite them in marriage. To this moment they bring the fullness of their hearts as a treasure to share with one another. They bring the dreams which bind them together. They bring that particular personality and spirit which is uniquely their own, and out of which will grow the reality of their life together. We rejoice with them as the outward symbol of an inward union of hearts, a union, blessed by God, created by friendship, respect and love.
No person should attend a wedding without giving thanks to God for the sacrament of marriage, and renewing in his heart the vows that are being taken for the first time by others. No person should leave without doing that for which he came..... praying that God's blessing may truly rest upon this man and this woman all the days of their life together. As you pray, so may you also receive a blessing. And so, let us pray:
Heavenly Father, as we have gathered to witness and celebrate the union of Nigel and Janelle in holy matrimony we pray your blessing and goodwill on their lives; we pray that your grace would envelop them, that your providence would protect them, that your word would guide them, and that your love would inspire them. This we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Wedding message
Marriage has existed throughout human history, and whether we take the language of Genesis to be literal or figurative, the principle is the same: that God himself determined that it was not good for man to be alone. "So God created man in his own image; male and female he created them." Countless centuries later, Jesus clarified God's intentions and authenticated a Christian ethic of marriage which has informed Western Civilization's view, not just of the sacredness of marriage, but the responsibility and accountability of men and the dignity and humanity of women, elevated from the status of chattel characterized by so many pre-christian and non-christian cultures. In the Gospel of Matthew we read that Jesus said, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh?' So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."
Fundamental to this Christian ethic is that, rather than property acquisition, social status, or business or political alliance, marriage is to be based on love. The apostle Paul put it this way in his letter to the Ephesians: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church..."
It's fitting that this, perhaps most radical idea of all--that this life-long commitment and bonding of family should find its source in mutual love--is the one we most revere. It fuels our stories--our literature, films, poetry, music--indeed almost all of our art. And it's why, today, we have gathered to celebrate this declaration of love, and these vows of commitment.
Wedding vows: Nigel & Janelle face each other join right hands
(to the Groom) Do you, Nigel Mitchell, in the presence of God,family and friends, promise to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in adversity, this woman whose right hand you now hold? Do you promise to be to her in all things a true and faithful husband, to be devoted to her, and to her only, as long as life shall last? And do you take her to be your lawful, wedded wife, as long as you both shall live? (He answers “I do.”)
(to the Bride) Do you, Janelle Clark, in the presence of God, family and friends, promise to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in adversity, this man whose right hand you now hold? Do you promise to be to him in all things a true and faithful wife, to be devoted to him, and to him only, as long as life shall last? Do you take him to be your lawfully, wedded husband, as long as you both shall live? (She answers, “I do.”)
Ring vows
Let us pray. Bless, O Lord, the giving and receiving of these rings. May Nigel and Janelle abide in Your peace and grow in their knowledge of Your presence through their loving union. May the seamless circle of these rings become the symbol of their enduring love and serve to remind them of the holy covenant into which they have entered today to be faithful, loving, and kind to each other. Dear God, may they live in Your grace and be forever true to this union. Amen.
(to the groom) Nigel, repeat after me: "Janelle, I give you this ring as a symbol of our vows, ...and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you. ...In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. ...With this ring, I thee wed."
(to the bride) Janelle, repeat after me: "Nigel, I give you this ring as a symbol of our vows, ...and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you. ...In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. ...With this ring, I thee wed."
Pronouncement
Nigel and Janelle, you are now man and wife according to the witness of this assembly and the law of Oregon. Become one, Fulfill your promises. Love and serve the Lord. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. You may kiss the bride.
Presentation of the couple
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you mister and misses Nigel Mitchell!
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The Law of Love
If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.(James 2:8-11 ESV)
A prevalent concept among evangelicals is that the law of Moses was superseded by Jesus with a simple ethic of love; as though all one has to do under the new covenant of Christ is love God and all the rest will take care of itself. One unspoken implication of this is an interpretation of love as a sentiment. In other words, have the right emotions, feel a certain way, and you're okay. As if this were not bad enough, a more crucial implication is that this idea of loving God is something that Jesus introduced as distinct and different from the law of Moses. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When the lawyer asked Jesus what the greatest commandment of the Law was, and Jesus answered,"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets,"(Matthew 22:37-40 ESV), Jesus was actually quoting the law himself, specifically Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Consider, for instance, that in the Gospel of Luke the tables are turned and Jesus asks a lawyer, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?", and the lawyer answers with the same two verses. What Jesus and all his Mosaic Law scholar-interrogators understood perfectly well was that love was not distinct from the Law: it was the law. All the rest of it, the rules, and commandments and prohibitions were merely the practical outworking of that law of love.
The radical part of Jesus' message was to identify how pallid and compromised human interpretation of that law had become, and how hopeless it was to achieve by self-righteous effort. When Jesus assented to the lawyer's answer, and the lawyer, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29), Jesus answered him with the parable of the good Samaritan, an object of racial loathing by pious Jews of the day.
When Jesus told his disciples how difficult it would be for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God, they despaired: "Who then can be saved" But Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:25,26 ESV)
This is the hopeless dilemma of man the apostle Paul spoke of: For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members, (Romans 7:22,23 ESV)
Judged by this law of love, when I look to my own self I see what a pathetic and degenerate sinner I am, thoroughly lost without God's grace and the justification of Christ; for if I am commanded, in the very first and most important commandment, to love God with all my being, I cannot in all honesty, identify even one moment when I have loved God with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind.
...who on earth can set me free from the clutches of my sinful nature? I thank God there is a way out through Jesus Christ our Lord.
No condemnation now hangs over the head of those who are "in" Jesus Christ. For the new spiritual principle of life "in" Christ lifts me out of the old vicious circle of sin and death.
The Law never succeeded in producing righteousness - the failure was always the weakness of human nature. But God has met this by sending his own Son Jesus Christ to live in that human nature which causes the trouble. And, while Christ was actually taking upon himself the sins of men, God condemned that sinful nature. (Romans 7:24-8:3 Phillips translation)
But now we are seeing the righteousness of God declared quite apart from the Law (though amply testified to by both Law and Prophets) - it is a righteousness imparted to, and operating in, all who have faith in Jesus Christ. (For there is no distinction to be made anywhere: everyone has sinned, everyone falls short of the beauty of God's plan.) Under this divine system a man who has faith is now freely acquitted in the eyes of God by his generous dealing in the redemptive act of Jesus Christ. God has appointed him as the means of propitiation, a propitiation accomplished by the shedding of his blood, to be received and made effective in ourselves by faith. God has done this to demonstrate his righteousness both by the wiping out of the sins of the past (the time when he withheld his hand), and by showing in the present time that he is a just God and that he justifies every man who has faith in Jesus Christ. (Romans 3:21-26 Phillips translation)
A prevalent concept among evangelicals is that the law of Moses was superseded by Jesus with a simple ethic of love; as though all one has to do under the new covenant of Christ is love God and all the rest will take care of itself. One unspoken implication of this is an interpretation of love as a sentiment. In other words, have the right emotions, feel a certain way, and you're okay. As if this were not bad enough, a more crucial implication is that this idea of loving God is something that Jesus introduced as distinct and different from the law of Moses. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When the lawyer asked Jesus what the greatest commandment of the Law was, and Jesus answered,"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets,"(Matthew 22:37-40 ESV), Jesus was actually quoting the law himself, specifically Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Consider, for instance, that in the Gospel of Luke the tables are turned and Jesus asks a lawyer, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?", and the lawyer answers with the same two verses. What Jesus and all his Mosaic Law scholar-interrogators understood perfectly well was that love was not distinct from the Law: it was the law. All the rest of it, the rules, and commandments and prohibitions were merely the practical outworking of that law of love.
The radical part of Jesus' message was to identify how pallid and compromised human interpretation of that law had become, and how hopeless it was to achieve by self-righteous effort. When Jesus assented to the lawyer's answer, and the lawyer, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29), Jesus answered him with the parable of the good Samaritan, an object of racial loathing by pious Jews of the day.
When Jesus told his disciples how difficult it would be for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God, they despaired: "Who then can be saved" But Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:25,26 ESV)
This is the hopeless dilemma of man the apostle Paul spoke of: For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members, (Romans 7:22,23 ESV)
Judged by this law of love, when I look to my own self I see what a pathetic and degenerate sinner I am, thoroughly lost without God's grace and the justification of Christ; for if I am commanded, in the very first and most important commandment, to love God with all my being, I cannot in all honesty, identify even one moment when I have loved God with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind.
...who on earth can set me free from the clutches of my sinful nature? I thank God there is a way out through Jesus Christ our Lord.
No condemnation now hangs over the head of those who are "in" Jesus Christ. For the new spiritual principle of life "in" Christ lifts me out of the old vicious circle of sin and death.
The Law never succeeded in producing righteousness - the failure was always the weakness of human nature. But God has met this by sending his own Son Jesus Christ to live in that human nature which causes the trouble. And, while Christ was actually taking upon himself the sins of men, God condemned that sinful nature. (Romans 7:24-8:3 Phillips translation)
But now we are seeing the righteousness of God declared quite apart from the Law (though amply testified to by both Law and Prophets) - it is a righteousness imparted to, and operating in, all who have faith in Jesus Christ. (For there is no distinction to be made anywhere: everyone has sinned, everyone falls short of the beauty of God's plan.) Under this divine system a man who has faith is now freely acquitted in the eyes of God by his generous dealing in the redemptive act of Jesus Christ. God has appointed him as the means of propitiation, a propitiation accomplished by the shedding of his blood, to be received and made effective in ourselves by faith. God has done this to demonstrate his righteousness both by the wiping out of the sins of the past (the time when he withheld his hand), and by showing in the present time that he is a just God and that he justifies every man who has faith in Jesus Christ. (Romans 3:21-26 Phillips translation)
Monday, May 26, 2008
Awe
Holy and awesome is his name! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever! (Psalms 111:9,10 ESV)
It seems to me at times that with some of our contemporary forms of worship we are losing a sense of awe for God. The use of "boyfriend-girlfriend" language in worship songs can inspire many emotions--tenderness, affection, even gratitude--but not awe.
There is a sense of familiarity with God implied in Jesus' use of the pronoun "Abba," (which is more accurately analogous to "Papa" rather than "Daddy" as some have claimed), but there is a danger in overemphasizing this familiarity if, with it, we lose the proper sense of fear and self-abasement included in our necessary awe of God.
Trends within the American Evangelical movement pull in this direction, one of the most influential being the "seeker sensitive" template of church service pioneered by Willow Creek Community Church in one of the suburbs of Chicago. The motive behind it has the best of intentions: evangelical outreach. The theory was to make "church" less intimidating and off-putting to the non-believer. Willow Creek did extensive market research of the Madison Avenue type (surveys and focus groups) to arrive at a form of church obsevance that would serve that end. Music should be contemporary rock and pop styling, no old hymns or archaic language. Clothing should be casual--no robes for the ministers, no suits or formal dresses for the laity. And most of all, anonymity. Visitors should not be identified, acknowledged or approached by anyone before, during, or after the service, but all contact should be done strictly through a card the visitor can fill out on a voluntary basis.
To whatever degree this template has been successful in evangelical outreach, I find it troubling that little thought seems to be given to the result this has had on the body of believers. Obvious questions present themselves: is Christian worship service really the best venue for evangelical outreach? Should we really accommodate worship to the popular culture so as to make it palatable to the nonbeliever? Are we diluting worship and ministry to the body of Christ by appealing to a non-spiritual--or even non-christian--cultural common denominator?
Jesus often warned that aspects of the Gospel were loathsome to the world, warned that there was a cost to being his follower.
If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.(John 15:18 ESV)
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26 ESV)
This last quotation--obviously, I think, an example of hyperbole--is ripe for misinterpretation, yet a perfect example of the appropriate self-effacement essential to an awe of God; also a perfect example of an attitude abhorrent to contemporary culture. If there is anything our culture affirms to us, it is that we should love ourselves, that we should put ourselves first, that we "owe" ourselves the best and the most. Against this backdrop Jesus gives the horrifying command that we place ourselves last.
But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:26-28 ESV)
As I discussed this post with my wife, she challenged me: "how would you do things different?"
Fair enough. Let me offer these humble suggestions:
1. More depth and demanding lyric content in worship music. There is a long and established history of Christian worship music conforming to the prevailing style of the day; as the story goes, Martin Luther wrote A Mighty Fortress is our God to the tune of a common drinking song of his time, so I am not arguing against contemporary music, but rather contemporary lyric style. One of the marks of American pop music, whether it be rock, folk, country, or even show tunes, is repetition. Much of contemporary worship music has borrowed this lyric convention from popular music--to its severe detriment, I submit. And so we often have one or two short verses and a chorus that is repeated, sometimes ad nauseam. Some Christian authors engaged in this debate have called such music, "happy clappy." I have already made reference to "boyfriend-girlfriend" language in worship music; I think the avoidance of romantic and sentimental language in worship music would also be an important move. Let me offer this challenge as an illustration: find one contemporary worship song that demonstrates even half of the depth and theological content of the six verses of Amazing Grace.
2. More formality. I think it a testament to how counter to popular culture this idea is, that I feel almost self-reproachful in writing those words. (I imagine eyes rolling and the heaving of deep sighs from those of you who read this.) Nevertheless, I remain firm: yes, more formality: formality in dress, formality in speech, formality in manners. I'm not going to say much about this, I'd just like you to consider it, to ponder what this might mean, and what effect it might have on our children.
3. More sobriety in mood. What I mean by this is more of a balance or, perhaps a broader spectrum of emotion within worship. Contemporary worship seems almost entirely focused on the "up" side of the emotional range. An even cursory reading of the Psalms will demonstrate that Biblical worship encompasses all of human emotion, the dirge as well as the song of joy.
So then, my dearest friends, as you have always followed my advice - and that not only when I was present to give it - so now that I am far away be keener than ever to work out the salvation that God has given you with a proper sense of awe and responsibility. For it is God who is at work within you, giving you the will and the power to achieve his purpose. (Philippians 2:12,13 the J.B. Phillips translation)
It seems to me at times that with some of our contemporary forms of worship we are losing a sense of awe for God. The use of "boyfriend-girlfriend" language in worship songs can inspire many emotions--tenderness, affection, even gratitude--but not awe.
There is a sense of familiarity with God implied in Jesus' use of the pronoun "Abba," (which is more accurately analogous to "Papa" rather than "Daddy" as some have claimed), but there is a danger in overemphasizing this familiarity if, with it, we lose the proper sense of fear and self-abasement included in our necessary awe of God.
Trends within the American Evangelical movement pull in this direction, one of the most influential being the "seeker sensitive" template of church service pioneered by Willow Creek Community Church in one of the suburbs of Chicago. The motive behind it has the best of intentions: evangelical outreach. The theory was to make "church" less intimidating and off-putting to the non-believer. Willow Creek did extensive market research of the Madison Avenue type (surveys and focus groups) to arrive at a form of church obsevance that would serve that end. Music should be contemporary rock and pop styling, no old hymns or archaic language. Clothing should be casual--no robes for the ministers, no suits or formal dresses for the laity. And most of all, anonymity. Visitors should not be identified, acknowledged or approached by anyone before, during, or after the service, but all contact should be done strictly through a card the visitor can fill out on a voluntary basis.
To whatever degree this template has been successful in evangelical outreach, I find it troubling that little thought seems to be given to the result this has had on the body of believers. Obvious questions present themselves: is Christian worship service really the best venue for evangelical outreach? Should we really accommodate worship to the popular culture so as to make it palatable to the nonbeliever? Are we diluting worship and ministry to the body of Christ by appealing to a non-spiritual--or even non-christian--cultural common denominator?
Jesus often warned that aspects of the Gospel were loathsome to the world, warned that there was a cost to being his follower.
If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.(John 15:18 ESV)
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26 ESV)
This last quotation--obviously, I think, an example of hyperbole--is ripe for misinterpretation, yet a perfect example of the appropriate self-effacement essential to an awe of God; also a perfect example of an attitude abhorrent to contemporary culture. If there is anything our culture affirms to us, it is that we should love ourselves, that we should put ourselves first, that we "owe" ourselves the best and the most. Against this backdrop Jesus gives the horrifying command that we place ourselves last.
But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:26-28 ESV)
As I discussed this post with my wife, she challenged me: "how would you do things different?"
Fair enough. Let me offer these humble suggestions:
1. More depth and demanding lyric content in worship music. There is a long and established history of Christian worship music conforming to the prevailing style of the day; as the story goes, Martin Luther wrote A Mighty Fortress is our God to the tune of a common drinking song of his time, so I am not arguing against contemporary music, but rather contemporary lyric style. One of the marks of American pop music, whether it be rock, folk, country, or even show tunes, is repetition. Much of contemporary worship music has borrowed this lyric convention from popular music--to its severe detriment, I submit. And so we often have one or two short verses and a chorus that is repeated, sometimes ad nauseam. Some Christian authors engaged in this debate have called such music, "happy clappy." I have already made reference to "boyfriend-girlfriend" language in worship music; I think the avoidance of romantic and sentimental language in worship music would also be an important move. Let me offer this challenge as an illustration: find one contemporary worship song that demonstrates even half of the depth and theological content of the six verses of Amazing Grace.
2. More formality. I think it a testament to how counter to popular culture this idea is, that I feel almost self-reproachful in writing those words. (I imagine eyes rolling and the heaving of deep sighs from those of you who read this.) Nevertheless, I remain firm: yes, more formality: formality in dress, formality in speech, formality in manners. I'm not going to say much about this, I'd just like you to consider it, to ponder what this might mean, and what effect it might have on our children.
3. More sobriety in mood. What I mean by this is more of a balance or, perhaps a broader spectrum of emotion within worship. Contemporary worship seems almost entirely focused on the "up" side of the emotional range. An even cursory reading of the Psalms will demonstrate that Biblical worship encompasses all of human emotion, the dirge as well as the song of joy.
So then, my dearest friends, as you have always followed my advice - and that not only when I was present to give it - so now that I am far away be keener than ever to work out the salvation that God has given you with a proper sense of awe and responsibility. For it is God who is at work within you, giving you the will and the power to achieve his purpose. (Philippians 2:12,13 the J.B. Phillips translation)
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Expelled!
I just came home from watching Ben Stein's new documentary "Expelled." You might remember Stein from his performance in the 80s teen movie Ferris Bueler's Day Off as the dead-pan teacher asking hopelessly, "anyone? anyone?," or his TV game show on the Comedy Central channel, Ben Stein's Money, or his commentaries on the TV show Sunday Morning. In Expelled Stein examines the ideological stranglehold that the established scientific and academic communities have in deciding orthodoxy with regard to Darwinist evolution to the absolute exclusion of the incipient Intelligent Design movement. The previous sentence implies a dry sort of clinical approach, but Stein's demeanor, and especially the director's adroit use of inter-cut clips from old black and white films--quite a few of which seem to be 50s era grade school instructionals--give the movie real, at times laugh-out-loud, humor.
Stein interviews many leading lights in the Intelligent Design movement, as well as its most ardent detractors: Dennet, Hitchens, Dawkins and Eugenie Scott, head of an organization whose whole existence is devoted to excluding Intelligent Design from the American classroom and preserving Dawinism as educational dogma, the National Center For Science Education.
Perhaps his primary focus, however, is with interviewing scientists, academics,and even journalists who have been ostracized, ridiculed, denied tenure, fired and then blacklisted for the mere passing mention of the possible validity of Intelligent Design.
There is, as well, a fascinating, if disturbing and all too short, examination of the darkest historical consequences of Dawinism: the Eugenics movement in the United States in which, after the tireless lobbying of Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) many thousands of retarded Americans were forcibly sterilized, and in Nazi Germany 70,000 retarded, genetically handicapped, or people otherwise deemed by the state as "useless eaters" were gassed and cremated in the interest of strengthening humanity.
The film is capped off by an interview with Richard Dawkins that proves squirm-inducing with embarrassing humor when this most caustic and vituperative voice in opposition to all things God--author of The God Delusion in which he asserts that religious instruction of children is a form of child abuse and should be made illegal--finally admits that Intelligent Design might eventually prove to be true, but only if the intelligent designer turns out to be--(I'm not kidding)--an advanced extra-terrestrial race who must have itself derived from the non-determinate forces of natural selection (Dawinism).
I was thrilled at this movie because it's something I've never seen before: a film with nationwide release with excellent production values, humor and skill, from a conservative and monotheistic viewpoint. I want to see more films like this. Many, many more. With that in mind I'm encouraging all my friends, acquaintances, and anyone else whose ear I can get, to go see this film. Don't wait for it to come out on video. If everyone does that it will ensure that any similar future projects will only be released on video. The way to support good art, the way to encourage more good art, is to buy it.
Stein interviews many leading lights in the Intelligent Design movement, as well as its most ardent detractors: Dennet, Hitchens, Dawkins and Eugenie Scott, head of an organization whose whole existence is devoted to excluding Intelligent Design from the American classroom and preserving Dawinism as educational dogma, the National Center For Science Education.
Perhaps his primary focus, however, is with interviewing scientists, academics,and even journalists who have been ostracized, ridiculed, denied tenure, fired and then blacklisted for the mere passing mention of the possible validity of Intelligent Design.
There is, as well, a fascinating, if disturbing and all too short, examination of the darkest historical consequences of Dawinism: the Eugenics movement in the United States in which, after the tireless lobbying of Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) many thousands of retarded Americans were forcibly sterilized, and in Nazi Germany 70,000 retarded, genetically handicapped, or people otherwise deemed by the state as "useless eaters" were gassed and cremated in the interest of strengthening humanity.
The film is capped off by an interview with Richard Dawkins that proves squirm-inducing with embarrassing humor when this most caustic and vituperative voice in opposition to all things God--author of The God Delusion in which he asserts that religious instruction of children is a form of child abuse and should be made illegal--finally admits that Intelligent Design might eventually prove to be true, but only if the intelligent designer turns out to be--(I'm not kidding)--an advanced extra-terrestrial race who must have itself derived from the non-determinate forces of natural selection (Dawinism).
I was thrilled at this movie because it's something I've never seen before: a film with nationwide release with excellent production values, humor and skill, from a conservative and monotheistic viewpoint. I want to see more films like this. Many, many more. With that in mind I'm encouraging all my friends, acquaintances, and anyone else whose ear I can get, to go see this film. Don't wait for it to come out on video. If everyone does that it will ensure that any similar future projects will only be released on video. The way to support good art, the way to encourage more good art, is to buy it.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Creature or Creator?
It is not that they do not know the truth about God; indeed he has made it quite plain to them. For since the beginning of the world the invisible attributes of God, e.g. his eternal power and divinity, have been plainly discernible through things which he has made and which are commonly seen and known... (Romans 1:19,20 Phillips translation)
It's a long held understanding in Christian teaching that one of the ways in which man shares in God's image is that he creates; and certainly one of the things man creates is art. Sacred themes are so dominant in the history of the art of Western civilization that they far outnumbered secular subjects for many centuries. The Renaissance in Southern Europe and the Reformation in Northern Europe brought the most pronounced changes in this regard, but with different outcomes as argued by Francis Schaeffer in How Should We Then Live? Both still held God as the sovereign creator, and celebrated the sacred with perhaps the most superlative craft, artistic achievement, and beauty ever produced by human hands. See, for example, from Southern Europe, Carrivaggio's Madonna of the Rosary:
And from Northern (Reformation) Europe, Rembrandt's Abraham and Isaac:
However, Southern Europe perpetuated the secular/sacred divide taught by prior generations of theologians, followed the humanist philosophical thread of the Renaissance by such philosophers as Erasmus that eventually lead to the centrality of man in the Enlightenment. The Reformation theologians, by placing scripture in ascendancy over tradition and the hierarchy of the clergy, taught a worldview that denied a secular/sacred divide, that instead affirmed that all vocations were in equal service to God. In this view all representations of God's beautiful creation, that through the skill of the painter celebrated that creation, were acts of worship. So then even the domestic scenes of Vermeer, who, although he had converted to his wife's Catholicism nevertheless painted for a reformed christian clientele, were seen as glorifying to God. Or Albrecht Durer's Young Hare
is of equivalent reverence as his Praying Hands.
As the atheistic philosophers of the Enlightenment began to exert more and more influence in the circles of the intelligentsia of Europe, some of the first to reflect this thinking empirically in their work were artists. Detached from God and any consideration of his creation, the underlying motive was no longer a celebration of beauty and the extant creation, but a celebration of the artist's inner vision. The goal was no longer to represent the truth of an objective reality, but to conceive an object of originality from the artist's unique perceptions. This started first with mere distortion of the visible world with the Impressionists such as Monet, Renoir, and Degas. Post-Impressionists Van Gogh, Cezzane & Seurat followed quickly on their heels. Observe the fragmentation of form and color in Van Gogh's Starry Night, and its shattering difference from the paintings above:
Even at this, there was still a tenuous connection to the real world, distorted as it was--but it wasn't to last long. As the culture became increasingly removed from God, and any remnants of faith more compartmentalized in the artist's worldview, painting became more and more idiosyncratic so that all connection to reality was sacrificed to the goal of originality, novelty and the artist's conceptions. Abstract Expressionism, Cubism and a host of other "schools" of painting flourished in the fine art world. In the 1930s Jackson Pollock made a "splash" on the New York art scene with his drip style of painting.
It is something of the ultimate idiosyncrasy, born of whim, chance, and seemly thoughtless kinetic expression, without the slightest intent to represent anything other than what the observer sees: a random and disorganized mix of color and contrast that Pollock called simply, No. 5. But even this pales to Shawn Eichman's National Endowment for the Arts funded piece she called the "Alchemy Cabinet," which displayed her own dismembered second-trimester aborted baby next to the obligatory twisted wire coat hanger.
When we apply Paul's injunction to the Colossian church--Whatever you do, put your whole heart and soul into it, as into work done for God, and not merely for men - knowing that your real reward, a heavenly one, will come from God, since you are actually employed by Christ, (Colossians 3:23,24 Phillips translation)--we can exercise creativity, whether in the industrial, service, or fine arts, and know that we are participating in the nature of God, and even worshiping God by our work. If, however, we take the view that our work is something separate from our relationship with God, that our work life resides in a compartment delineated from our faith life, we run the risk of going down the path that has lead to the abominations that are so much of modern art.
...whatever you do, eating or drinking or anything else, everything should be done to bring glory to God. (1 Corinthians 10:31 Phillips translation)
It's a long held understanding in Christian teaching that one of the ways in which man shares in God's image is that he creates; and certainly one of the things man creates is art. Sacred themes are so dominant in the history of the art of Western civilization that they far outnumbered secular subjects for many centuries. The Renaissance in Southern Europe and the Reformation in Northern Europe brought the most pronounced changes in this regard, but with different outcomes as argued by Francis Schaeffer in How Should We Then Live? Both still held God as the sovereign creator, and celebrated the sacred with perhaps the most superlative craft, artistic achievement, and beauty ever produced by human hands. See, for example, from Southern Europe, Carrivaggio's Madonna of the Rosary:
And from Northern (Reformation) Europe, Rembrandt's Abraham and Isaac:
However, Southern Europe perpetuated the secular/sacred divide taught by prior generations of theologians, followed the humanist philosophical thread of the Renaissance by such philosophers as Erasmus that eventually lead to the centrality of man in the Enlightenment. The Reformation theologians, by placing scripture in ascendancy over tradition and the hierarchy of the clergy, taught a worldview that denied a secular/sacred divide, that instead affirmed that all vocations were in equal service to God. In this view all representations of God's beautiful creation, that through the skill of the painter celebrated that creation, were acts of worship. So then even the domestic scenes of Vermeer, who, although he had converted to his wife's Catholicism nevertheless painted for a reformed christian clientele, were seen as glorifying to God. Or Albrecht Durer's Young Hare
is of equivalent reverence as his Praying Hands.
As the atheistic philosophers of the Enlightenment began to exert more and more influence in the circles of the intelligentsia of Europe, some of the first to reflect this thinking empirically in their work were artists. Detached from God and any consideration of his creation, the underlying motive was no longer a celebration of beauty and the extant creation, but a celebration of the artist's inner vision. The goal was no longer to represent the truth of an objective reality, but to conceive an object of originality from the artist's unique perceptions. This started first with mere distortion of the visible world with the Impressionists such as Monet, Renoir, and Degas. Post-Impressionists Van Gogh, Cezzane & Seurat followed quickly on their heels. Observe the fragmentation of form and color in Van Gogh's Starry Night, and its shattering difference from the paintings above:
Even at this, there was still a tenuous connection to the real world, distorted as it was--but it wasn't to last long. As the culture became increasingly removed from God, and any remnants of faith more compartmentalized in the artist's worldview, painting became more and more idiosyncratic so that all connection to reality was sacrificed to the goal of originality, novelty and the artist's conceptions. Abstract Expressionism, Cubism and a host of other "schools" of painting flourished in the fine art world. In the 1930s Jackson Pollock made a "splash" on the New York art scene with his drip style of painting.
It is something of the ultimate idiosyncrasy, born of whim, chance, and seemly thoughtless kinetic expression, without the slightest intent to represent anything other than what the observer sees: a random and disorganized mix of color and contrast that Pollock called simply, No. 5. But even this pales to Shawn Eichman's National Endowment for the Arts funded piece she called the "Alchemy Cabinet," which displayed her own dismembered second-trimester aborted baby next to the obligatory twisted wire coat hanger.
When we apply Paul's injunction to the Colossian church--Whatever you do, put your whole heart and soul into it, as into work done for God, and not merely for men - knowing that your real reward, a heavenly one, will come from God, since you are actually employed by Christ, (Colossians 3:23,24 Phillips translation)--we can exercise creativity, whether in the industrial, service, or fine arts, and know that we are participating in the nature of God, and even worshiping God by our work. If, however, we take the view that our work is something separate from our relationship with God, that our work life resides in a compartment delineated from our faith life, we run the risk of going down the path that has lead to the abominations that are so much of modern art.
...whatever you do, eating or drinking or anything else, everything should be done to bring glory to God. (1 Corinthians 10:31 Phillips translation)
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Eulogy for Uncle Bud
My wife's uncle "Bud" Throckmorton just passed away in Colorado Springs. The following is a eulogy I gave for Bud at a family memorial service we had here in Tigard, Oregon at my sister's-in-law house.
I knew very little about Uncle Bud other than his quiet demeanor and his occasional dry wit, so I called Uncle John the other night and asked him to tell me what he could remember. It seems John was a very young child when Bud shipped off to Europe in World War II, so he has no memory of him until his return from the war. He was able to tell me little about Bud's war experience other than he fought in the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded the bronze star, since Bud was reluctant to ever speak of what he had seen or done. He had had long talks with Grandma Throckmorton when he first got back, but then rarely ever spoke of it again. And whatever he told her went with her to her grave.
Soon after his return, Uncle John, Grandma and Grandpa Throckmorton went to Venezuela for a year, leaving Bud and Great Grandpa McChesney (Grandma Throckmorton's father) to take care of the farm. Bud found, during that year, that he loathed farming which he called "dirt grubbing."
He married his first real girlfriend, Aunt Jean, whose ambition was to have 10 children--they only made it to 7. With all those mouths to feed, hunting was a necessary supplement to the family food budget. It was a skill he had honed from prior necessity during his childhood during the Great Depression. John said that during hunting season, he would often leave before dawn during work days to hunt a few hours before heading to his job. Venison was a family staple.
I'm sure there a thousand examples of this kind of stoic practicality in Bud's life, a man who was typical of his time, who answered the call of his country to war and without complaint, endured its horrors, then returned and set about the business of raising a family, getting the things done that needed doing--but I can only guess at them. He didn't leave a written record, or, if the few pictures Nan was able to find of him is any example, much of a pictorial one either. But he left the legacy of 7 children and the 50 plus years as a faithful husband of one wife. I guess that will speak better than any words he might have written, or that any of us can say.
One bitter-sweet detail that John told me is that at the end, as Bud knew his time was short, he expressed the fear that the things he had been obliged to do during the war would prevent his entrance to heaven. I'm saddened to think that the gospel message had not been made clear to him that it is not our good deeds that gains us access to God's presence, but God's grace through Jesus Christ, as Paul said to the Ephesian Christians, "...he shows for all time the tremendous generosity of the grace and kindness he has expressed towards us in Christ Jesus. It was nothing you could or did achieve - it was God's gift to you. No one can pride himself upon earning the love of God. The fact is that what we are we owe to the hand of God upon us." (Ephesians 2:7-9 Phillips translation) And the apostle John said, "...the blood which his Son shed for us keeps us clean from all sin. If we refuse to admit that we are sinners, then we live in a world of illusion and truth becomes a stranger to us. But if we freely admit that we have sinned, we find God utterly reliable and straightforward - he forgives our sins and makes us thoroughly clean from all that is evil." (1 John 1:7-9 Phillips translation)
Uncle John said someone--I don't remember who--set his mind at ease. So now, after all the hardships and good times, the disappointments and joys, and after all the plain hard work of his life, I hope Bud has finally entered the rest promised in the letter to the Hebrews, "There still exists, therefore, a full and complete rest for the people of God. And he who experiences his real rest is resting from his own work as fully as God from his." (Hebrews 4:9&10 Phillips translation)
I knew very little about Uncle Bud other than his quiet demeanor and his occasional dry wit, so I called Uncle John the other night and asked him to tell me what he could remember. It seems John was a very young child when Bud shipped off to Europe in World War II, so he has no memory of him until his return from the war. He was able to tell me little about Bud's war experience other than he fought in the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded the bronze star, since Bud was reluctant to ever speak of what he had seen or done. He had had long talks with Grandma Throckmorton when he first got back, but then rarely ever spoke of it again. And whatever he told her went with her to her grave.
Soon after his return, Uncle John, Grandma and Grandpa Throckmorton went to Venezuela for a year, leaving Bud and Great Grandpa McChesney (Grandma Throckmorton's father) to take care of the farm. Bud found, during that year, that he loathed farming which he called "dirt grubbing."
He married his first real girlfriend, Aunt Jean, whose ambition was to have 10 children--they only made it to 7. With all those mouths to feed, hunting was a necessary supplement to the family food budget. It was a skill he had honed from prior necessity during his childhood during the Great Depression. John said that during hunting season, he would often leave before dawn during work days to hunt a few hours before heading to his job. Venison was a family staple.
I'm sure there a thousand examples of this kind of stoic practicality in Bud's life, a man who was typical of his time, who answered the call of his country to war and without complaint, endured its horrors, then returned and set about the business of raising a family, getting the things done that needed doing--but I can only guess at them. He didn't leave a written record, or, if the few pictures Nan was able to find of him is any example, much of a pictorial one either. But he left the legacy of 7 children and the 50 plus years as a faithful husband of one wife. I guess that will speak better than any words he might have written, or that any of us can say.
One bitter-sweet detail that John told me is that at the end, as Bud knew his time was short, he expressed the fear that the things he had been obliged to do during the war would prevent his entrance to heaven. I'm saddened to think that the gospel message had not been made clear to him that it is not our good deeds that gains us access to God's presence, but God's grace through Jesus Christ, as Paul said to the Ephesian Christians, "...he shows for all time the tremendous generosity of the grace and kindness he has expressed towards us in Christ Jesus. It was nothing you could or did achieve - it was God's gift to you. No one can pride himself upon earning the love of God. The fact is that what we are we owe to the hand of God upon us." (Ephesians 2:7-9 Phillips translation) And the apostle John said, "...the blood which his Son shed for us keeps us clean from all sin. If we refuse to admit that we are sinners, then we live in a world of illusion and truth becomes a stranger to us. But if we freely admit that we have sinned, we find God utterly reliable and straightforward - he forgives our sins and makes us thoroughly clean from all that is evil." (1 John 1:7-9 Phillips translation)
Uncle John said someone--I don't remember who--set his mind at ease. So now, after all the hardships and good times, the disappointments and joys, and after all the plain hard work of his life, I hope Bud has finally entered the rest promised in the letter to the Hebrews, "There still exists, therefore, a full and complete rest for the people of God. And he who experiences his real rest is resting from his own work as fully as God from his." (Hebrews 4:9&10 Phillips translation)
Friday, January 18, 2008
Benevolence or Ego?
So, God created humans simply so that we could worship him? Why bother? That seems like the height of narcissism. (A comment from an atheist participant to an online forum on theology)
As our culture proceeds down the path of ever increasing secularism and the knowledge of Christian orthodoxy disappears from the popular psyche, statements like the one above will proliferate. Such sentiments are helped along by the new batch of belligerent atheists residing on the best-seller's lists who are not satisfied with simply repeating the arguments of Bertrand Russell against the existence of God, but seemed determined to indict the very idea of God as a fount of evil. So Richard Dawkins characterizes the instruction of children in Christian faith as a form of child abuse, and Christopher Hitchens titles his book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
This kind of rhetoric can leave those of us who understand God as the source of all that is good and just and loving in our existence in a kind of stunned silence. It can be difficult to know where to even begin to defend God's fundamental goodness against this kind of rancorous assault, yet that is our challenge, and indeed our mandate from scripture: always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you(1 Peter 3:15 ESV).
Certainly some of the problem with answering such statements as the one above is that the truth of the matter is so self-evident it's hard to formulate an answer, such as when a child asks why the sky is blue followed by an interminable succession of "why?" questions; the temptation is to answer, "because I say so!" And perhaps in my analogy lies the real answer after all.
To think that our obligation to worship God means that God was narcissistic in creating us is equivalent to a child considering her parents narcissistic for having her and then demanding obedience. This attitude in the child is actually due to her inability to interpret the world around her by any other criteria than by how it directly affects her. She sees her parent’s demand of obedience as being unfair; indeed, if the world does not conform to her comfort and immediate desires, even the world is unfair. We call this self-centeredness. If she could see her situation from her parent’s perspective, she would understand that her parents had her as an expression of their love--that their love wanted to expand to include another, and that their demands of her obedience is for her good, and, in reality, another expression of their love.
The seed of seeing God as a narcissist is our resentment in having to give up the center stage. One can almost hear the petulant mewling of the child, "but what about me?"
Coupled with this is a constricted and anthropomorphic vision of God. If He is seen as the angry old man with the long white beard frowning at all our fun and casting down thunderbolts from on high--a common caricature by popular media--He becomes that much easier to resent.
Of course the biblical vision of God is one that stretches our perceptions to their limits, and perhaps beyond. It is a vision of unsurpassable power:
Who has measured the oceans by using the palm of his hand?
Who has used the width of his hand to mark off the sky? Who has measured out the dust of the earth in a basket? Who has weighed the mountains on scales? Who has weighed the hills in a balance? Who can ever understand what is in the Lord's mind? Who can ever give him advice? Did the Lord have to ask anyone to help him understand? Did he have to ask someone to teach him the right way? Who taught him what he knows? Who showed him how to understand?
The nations are only a drop in a bucket to him. He considers them as nothing but dust on the scales. He weighs the islands as if they were only fine dust. (Isaiah 40:12-15 New International Readers Version)
But it is also a vision of incomparable love:
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born again because of what God has done. That person knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
How did God show his love for us? He sent his one and only Son into the world. He sent him so we could receive life through him.
What is love? It is not that we loved God. It is that he loved us and sent his Son to give his life to pay for our sins.
Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we should also love one another. No one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God lives in us. His love is made complete in us.
We know that we belong to him and he belongs to us. He has given us his Holy Spirit.
The Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. (1 John 4:7-14 New International Reader's Version)
Unlike the unitarian view of God, such as Islam, the trinitarian view of God revealed in the Bible shows us that God existed in a state of love within his own being expressed among the three persons of the Godhead. The statement written above by the Apostle John, "God is love," is never made about Allah, and indeed could not be made. But when we read in Genesis that God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness," it bears a striking resemblance to the creation of children by a husband and wife who wish to enlarge the love already shared between to two of them. It is not the attentive and disciplining parents whom we characterize as narcissistic, but those who give over to hired help the raising of their children.
We worship God because He created us in an act of love, because He provided all the beauty and wonder of our world we enjoy, because even after we separated ourselves from Him in rebellion, He provided a second chance to be reconciled to Him through Christ. Does He demand our worship? Yes. He even demands our love. But just as loving parents must demand obedience and respect from their children, even that is an act of His love, and meant for our good.
"You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being." (Revelation 4:11 NIV)
As our culture proceeds down the path of ever increasing secularism and the knowledge of Christian orthodoxy disappears from the popular psyche, statements like the one above will proliferate. Such sentiments are helped along by the new batch of belligerent atheists residing on the best-seller's lists who are not satisfied with simply repeating the arguments of Bertrand Russell against the existence of God, but seemed determined to indict the very idea of God as a fount of evil. So Richard Dawkins characterizes the instruction of children in Christian faith as a form of child abuse, and Christopher Hitchens titles his book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
This kind of rhetoric can leave those of us who understand God as the source of all that is good and just and loving in our existence in a kind of stunned silence. It can be difficult to know where to even begin to defend God's fundamental goodness against this kind of rancorous assault, yet that is our challenge, and indeed our mandate from scripture: always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you(1 Peter 3:15 ESV).
Certainly some of the problem with answering such statements as the one above is that the truth of the matter is so self-evident it's hard to formulate an answer, such as when a child asks why the sky is blue followed by an interminable succession of "why?" questions; the temptation is to answer, "because I say so!" And perhaps in my analogy lies the real answer after all.
To think that our obligation to worship God means that God was narcissistic in creating us is equivalent to a child considering her parents narcissistic for having her and then demanding obedience. This attitude in the child is actually due to her inability to interpret the world around her by any other criteria than by how it directly affects her. She sees her parent’s demand of obedience as being unfair; indeed, if the world does not conform to her comfort and immediate desires, even the world is unfair. We call this self-centeredness. If she could see her situation from her parent’s perspective, she would understand that her parents had her as an expression of their love--that their love wanted to expand to include another, and that their demands of her obedience is for her good, and, in reality, another expression of their love.
The seed of seeing God as a narcissist is our resentment in having to give up the center stage. One can almost hear the petulant mewling of the child, "but what about me?"
Coupled with this is a constricted and anthropomorphic vision of God. If He is seen as the angry old man with the long white beard frowning at all our fun and casting down thunderbolts from on high--a common caricature by popular media--He becomes that much easier to resent.
Of course the biblical vision of God is one that stretches our perceptions to their limits, and perhaps beyond. It is a vision of unsurpassable power:
Who has measured the oceans by using the palm of his hand?
Who has used the width of his hand to mark off the sky? Who has measured out the dust of the earth in a basket? Who has weighed the mountains on scales? Who has weighed the hills in a balance? Who can ever understand what is in the Lord's mind? Who can ever give him advice? Did the Lord have to ask anyone to help him understand? Did he have to ask someone to teach him the right way? Who taught him what he knows? Who showed him how to understand?
The nations are only a drop in a bucket to him. He considers them as nothing but dust on the scales. He weighs the islands as if they were only fine dust. (Isaiah 40:12-15 New International Readers Version)
But it is also a vision of incomparable love:
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born again because of what God has done. That person knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
How did God show his love for us? He sent his one and only Son into the world. He sent him so we could receive life through him.
What is love? It is not that we loved God. It is that he loved us and sent his Son to give his life to pay for our sins.
Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we should also love one another. No one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God lives in us. His love is made complete in us.
We know that we belong to him and he belongs to us. He has given us his Holy Spirit.
The Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. (1 John 4:7-14 New International Reader's Version)
Unlike the unitarian view of God, such as Islam, the trinitarian view of God revealed in the Bible shows us that God existed in a state of love within his own being expressed among the three persons of the Godhead. The statement written above by the Apostle John, "God is love," is never made about Allah, and indeed could not be made. But when we read in Genesis that God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness," it bears a striking resemblance to the creation of children by a husband and wife who wish to enlarge the love already shared between to two of them. It is not the attentive and disciplining parents whom we characterize as narcissistic, but those who give over to hired help the raising of their children.
We worship God because He created us in an act of love, because He provided all the beauty and wonder of our world we enjoy, because even after we separated ourselves from Him in rebellion, He provided a second chance to be reconciled to Him through Christ. Does He demand our worship? Yes. He even demands our love. But just as loving parents must demand obedience and respect from their children, even that is an act of His love, and meant for our good.
"You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being." (Revelation 4:11 NIV)
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Fall at His Feet
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” John 20:27,28 NIV
It is common these days (and I suspect, has been for quite some time) to view Jesus as something of a sage or philosopher, a guy who had a lot of good ideas about how one should live a just and moral life. It's possible that it's equally common for people who identify themselves as Christian, do so on the basis of their subscription to the wisdom and--well, "truth" is too restrictive a word due to the contemporary notions of moral relativism and the subjective nature of truth--let's say "appropriateness" of his teachings.
Many have pointed out that Jesus doesn't leave one this option. As C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not a be great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse."
But of course people rationalize this away all time by asserting that all the claims to divinity by Jesus were added later by either the writers of the Gospels or copiers centuries later. The wealth of scholarship affirming the reliability of the Biblical canon is ignored by such. Once this path is taken, its very difficult to retrace steps, and the argument changes to one akin to grappling with sand.
For anyone seriously addressing the question of our eternal status with God, however, it's essential to understand that this pallid concept of Jesus simply will not do. Our redemption, our reconciliation to God, our salvation will never be achieved by a belief in Jesus' teachings alone. A reliance on the resurrected Son of God, and a declaration, as the apostle Thomas, that Jesus in "my Lord and my God!" is required. As Lewis continued:
You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” John 20:27,28 NIV
It is common these days (and I suspect, has been for quite some time) to view Jesus as something of a sage or philosopher, a guy who had a lot of good ideas about how one should live a just and moral life. It's possible that it's equally common for people who identify themselves as Christian, do so on the basis of their subscription to the wisdom and--well, "truth" is too restrictive a word due to the contemporary notions of moral relativism and the subjective nature of truth--let's say "appropriateness" of his teachings.
Many have pointed out that Jesus doesn't leave one this option. As C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not a be great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse."
But of course people rationalize this away all time by asserting that all the claims to divinity by Jesus were added later by either the writers of the Gospels or copiers centuries later. The wealth of scholarship affirming the reliability of the Biblical canon is ignored by such. Once this path is taken, its very difficult to retrace steps, and the argument changes to one akin to grappling with sand.
For anyone seriously addressing the question of our eternal status with God, however, it's essential to understand that this pallid concept of Jesus simply will not do. Our redemption, our reconciliation to God, our salvation will never be achieved by a belief in Jesus' teachings alone. A reliance on the resurrected Son of God, and a declaration, as the apostle Thomas, that Jesus in "my Lord and my God!" is required. As Lewis continued:
You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Friday, November 16, 2007
The Cult of Self-Esteem
First, a short aside. For those of you who are kind enough to read this blog, let me apologize for being absent so long. My wife and I bought the old house belonging to my father-in-law and over these months we have been doing an extensive remodel, and finally have moved in. We've settled in to the point where I have time to once again make my written contributions. Thanks for your patience, and please pray with us that we will sell our old house. The market is very slow right now...
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. (2 Timothy 3:1-4 ESV)
I’m not sure when the “self-esteem” movement began. I feel somewhat like the proverbial boiled frog when I look around at the ubiquity of the term these days (you know, put a frog in a pan of cold water and ever so slowly bring it to a boil so by the time he realizes he’s in trouble, he’s already cooked). It seems that every personality, behavioral, and even financial malady these days is attributed to “low self-esteem”; but I confess to being truly astonished upon hearing that Crystal Cathedral pastor Robert Schuller wrote a book entitled: Self-Esteem: the New Reformation. I have no desire to read the thing since the title alone is enough to make me queasy, but I can pretty much guess the sort of new-agy pseudo-aphorisms within.
Apparently there is a pop-Evangelical wrinkle of the self-esteem trend which goes something like this: God has commanded us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves; therefore it’s necessary for us to cure ourselves from low self-esteem and learn to love ourselves so that we can love others.
The problem with this, of course, is that you’re not going to find anything even remotely similar to this in the Bible. Let's look again at this command to love our neighbor as ourselves. In reality it comes tied to another commandment which rightly precedes it:
And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”(Matt. 22:35-40 ESV)
Jesus was here quoting two different places in the Torah, Deuteronomy 10:12, and Leviticus 19:18. So these are long-standing principles in which God expresses something irreducible in human nature--God didn't have to tell man to love himself. It was well-understood that man's self-love was so intrinsic, so self-evident, that God could use that fact as an essential clause in the second Great Commandment.
Yet now, thousands of years later, pop psychology (and for all I know, academic psychology) challenges this fact, and tells us that we need to "learn" to love ourselves, that indeed we need to nurture and cultivate our self-love, and only in this way can we be healthy and complete. I would like to dispute this whole notion of "low self-esteem" being the cause of so many of our modern ills with a radical submission: that all of the contemporary behavioral problems attributed to "low self-esteem", are rather due to an obsessive, all-encompassing surfeit of self-love. But what about depression? What about self-destructive behaviors, what about suicide?
Let me illustrate with myself. About four years ago I lost about 60 pounds. I was exercising daily, bought a new wardrobe, and felt great about myself. But little by little, I began to regain weight. Five pound here over a vacation, a couple more during the holidays, and during this remodel and move (eating fast food in the car as I drove to the new house after work to paint, and no time to exercise)...well, I've regained pretty much all I had lost, and I'm not very happy when I look in the mirror. Fair enough. Does this mean I don't love myself anymore? No, it means that when I see myself in the mirror, I am disappointed because what I see doesn't match the ideal picture I have of myself, the self-image of my conceit. If I didn't love myself, it wouldn't matter that the reality didn't match the concept.
Now as far as this goes, it's a fairly benign example, but the principle is the same for truly toxic or even self-destructive behaviors: they are born of disappointment, depression or rage at the short-comings of our reality compared to our narcissistic internal vision. Is it any wonder, then, that Paul warned Timothy of the self-lovers, "reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God," ?
So what is the cure? Jesus' two Great Commandments: more love of God, more love of others--and, if not less love of self, at least less self-absorbtion.
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. (2 Timothy 3:1-4 ESV)
I’m not sure when the “self-esteem” movement began. I feel somewhat like the proverbial boiled frog when I look around at the ubiquity of the term these days (you know, put a frog in a pan of cold water and ever so slowly bring it to a boil so by the time he realizes he’s in trouble, he’s already cooked). It seems that every personality, behavioral, and even financial malady these days is attributed to “low self-esteem”; but I confess to being truly astonished upon hearing that Crystal Cathedral pastor Robert Schuller wrote a book entitled: Self-Esteem: the New Reformation. I have no desire to read the thing since the title alone is enough to make me queasy, but I can pretty much guess the sort of new-agy pseudo-aphorisms within.
Apparently there is a pop-Evangelical wrinkle of the self-esteem trend which goes something like this: God has commanded us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves; therefore it’s necessary for us to cure ourselves from low self-esteem and learn to love ourselves so that we can love others.
The problem with this, of course, is that you’re not going to find anything even remotely similar to this in the Bible. Let's look again at this command to love our neighbor as ourselves. In reality it comes tied to another commandment which rightly precedes it:
And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”(Matt. 22:35-40 ESV)
Jesus was here quoting two different places in the Torah, Deuteronomy 10:12, and Leviticus 19:18. So these are long-standing principles in which God expresses something irreducible in human nature--God didn't have to tell man to love himself. It was well-understood that man's self-love was so intrinsic, so self-evident, that God could use that fact as an essential clause in the second Great Commandment.
Yet now, thousands of years later, pop psychology (and for all I know, academic psychology) challenges this fact, and tells us that we need to "learn" to love ourselves, that indeed we need to nurture and cultivate our self-love, and only in this way can we be healthy and complete. I would like to dispute this whole notion of "low self-esteem" being the cause of so many of our modern ills with a radical submission: that all of the contemporary behavioral problems attributed to "low self-esteem", are rather due to an obsessive, all-encompassing surfeit of self-love. But what about depression? What about self-destructive behaviors, what about suicide?
Let me illustrate with myself. About four years ago I lost about 60 pounds. I was exercising daily, bought a new wardrobe, and felt great about myself. But little by little, I began to regain weight. Five pound here over a vacation, a couple more during the holidays, and during this remodel and move (eating fast food in the car as I drove to the new house after work to paint, and no time to exercise)...well, I've regained pretty much all I had lost, and I'm not very happy when I look in the mirror. Fair enough. Does this mean I don't love myself anymore? No, it means that when I see myself in the mirror, I am disappointed because what I see doesn't match the ideal picture I have of myself, the self-image of my conceit. If I didn't love myself, it wouldn't matter that the reality didn't match the concept.
Now as far as this goes, it's a fairly benign example, but the principle is the same for truly toxic or even self-destructive behaviors: they are born of disappointment, depression or rage at the short-comings of our reality compared to our narcissistic internal vision. Is it any wonder, then, that Paul warned Timothy of the self-lovers, "reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God," ?
So what is the cure? Jesus' two Great Commandments: more love of God, more love of others--and, if not less love of self, at least less self-absorbtion.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
The Measure and the Reward
And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. Luke 18:19 ESV
The statement above was not an admission of sin or unrighteousness on Jesus' part, but rather a declaration that our very sense of goodness--right and wrong, if you will--comes from God. It is the holiness of God--His absolute purity, transcendent of human capacity--that is the measuring stick for goodness.
This is where systems of morality unconnected to God inevitably fail, for they all use man as the measure and the reward for their function.
Try as you might to pick a living man or woman as your metric of morality, you are sure to be disappointed. At some point he or she will fall short of your "real" measurement which, perhaps against your best conscious efforts, resides within you somewhere beyond the reach of your reason and maybe even your consciousness; it is that inexplainable "ideal" man or woman which attests to the right or wrong of an action or attitude. The irony, of course, is that this ideal is not a man or woman at all--it is God.
In my years as a fabricator, and now as a draftsman, I've dealt with tolerances--the allowable deviation from the standard. But this very concept presupposes that standard of perfection. If the standard itself varies then even tolerances become meaningless. This is the fatal flaw in using man as the measure of morality.
Man as the reward fails as well. The appeal to behave a certain way for the good of society, or as a type of solidarity with your fellow man, or even to make your own life a little easier in avoiding conflict, always seems to smash against the wall of ego. We inevitably think something like, that's fine and well for my fellow man, but what about me?
Reinhold Niebuhr in Moral Man and Immoral Society wrote the following:
Pure religious idealism does not concern itself with the social problem. It does not give itself the illusion that material and mundane advantages can be gained by the refusal to assert your claims to them...Jesus did not counsel his disciples to forgive seventy times seven in order that they might convert their enemies, or make them more favorably disposed. He counseled it as an effort to approximate complete moral perfection, the perfection of God. He did not ask his followers to go the second mile in the hope that those who had impressed them into service would relent and give them freedom. He did not say that the enemy ought to be loved so that he would cease to be an enemy. He did not dwell upon the consequences of these moral actions, because he viewed them from an inner transcendent perspective.
Perhaps it was this inescapable sense that nothing in our physical reality quite "measures up" that led Plato to formulate his philosophy of the ideal, but that is the paradox of our existence; that we are perpetually disappointed yet inspired to better things. Our inability to realize Jesus' injunction, Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect, (Matthew 5:48) is both the necessity for Jesus' redemption, and the promise that God's ultimate plan will, at last, make that perfection a reality.
It is God's perfect nature that is the measure of our morality. And it is our relationship with God that is, ultimately, our reward.
"If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." John 14:23 ESV
The statement above was not an admission of sin or unrighteousness on Jesus' part, but rather a declaration that our very sense of goodness--right and wrong, if you will--comes from God. It is the holiness of God--His absolute purity, transcendent of human capacity--that is the measuring stick for goodness.
This is where systems of morality unconnected to God inevitably fail, for they all use man as the measure and the reward for their function.
Try as you might to pick a living man or woman as your metric of morality, you are sure to be disappointed. At some point he or she will fall short of your "real" measurement which, perhaps against your best conscious efforts, resides within you somewhere beyond the reach of your reason and maybe even your consciousness; it is that inexplainable "ideal" man or woman which attests to the right or wrong of an action or attitude. The irony, of course, is that this ideal is not a man or woman at all--it is God.
In my years as a fabricator, and now as a draftsman, I've dealt with tolerances--the allowable deviation from the standard. But this very concept presupposes that standard of perfection. If the standard itself varies then even tolerances become meaningless. This is the fatal flaw in using man as the measure of morality.
Man as the reward fails as well. The appeal to behave a certain way for the good of society, or as a type of solidarity with your fellow man, or even to make your own life a little easier in avoiding conflict, always seems to smash against the wall of ego. We inevitably think something like, that's fine and well for my fellow man, but what about me?
Reinhold Niebuhr in Moral Man and Immoral Society wrote the following:
Pure religious idealism does not concern itself with the social problem. It does not give itself the illusion that material and mundane advantages can be gained by the refusal to assert your claims to them...Jesus did not counsel his disciples to forgive seventy times seven in order that they might convert their enemies, or make them more favorably disposed. He counseled it as an effort to approximate complete moral perfection, the perfection of God. He did not ask his followers to go the second mile in the hope that those who had impressed them into service would relent and give them freedom. He did not say that the enemy ought to be loved so that he would cease to be an enemy. He did not dwell upon the consequences of these moral actions, because he viewed them from an inner transcendent perspective.
Perhaps it was this inescapable sense that nothing in our physical reality quite "measures up" that led Plato to formulate his philosophy of the ideal, but that is the paradox of our existence; that we are perpetually disappointed yet inspired to better things. Our inability to realize Jesus' injunction, Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect, (Matthew 5:48) is both the necessity for Jesus' redemption, and the promise that God's ultimate plan will, at last, make that perfection a reality.
It is God's perfect nature that is the measure of our morality. And it is our relationship with God that is, ultimately, our reward.
"If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." John 14:23 ESV
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Dialogue with Dan, part 2
It's probably obvious to those of you have been reading this and my other blog (thank you), that I've taken a break. A little explanation: in mid May Nan and I went on vacation. The first half of the week was great, then I got sick. This turned into one of the most debilitating cases of the flue I've had in many years. I'm finally feeling better, both physically and emotionally, so I'm back at the computer keyboard.
Dan, my Buddhist friend, was kind enough to respond to my last exchange. The following is his reply.
Don, No problem on the delay in answers. I myself was a little too busy for a while to give you a properly thought-out reply.
To start with a latter point, I want to assure you I am not angry at Christians (I read “My-Road-Back” several months ago). I feel occasional twinges of anger at the collective members of a certain religious group nowadays, but it’s not Christians. When I referred to irritating habits, I was thinking of certain childraising customs, but those are neither universal among nor exclusive to Christians. And on the topic of things that are neither universal among nor exclusive to Christians, you won’t hear me accuse Christians of hypocrisy. That is a tired cliché.
I always chafed at the concept of original sin, but not being a particularly deep thinker, was only able to put a finger on it thanks to Ayn Rand. Let me get back to your reply, in the order of your points.
You must have heard the expression before, “Read your Bible. It’ll scare the hell out of you!” The *constant* fearmongering, the stories of deathbed conversions, which admittedly may be overemphasized in the materials presented to children, the handwaving over the fate awaiting those who lived without ever having the chance to hear the Biblical message, and the injustice that I mentioned in my previous comment was what convinced me that there was something essential missing. The “handwaving” was basically, “We need to trust in the mercy and wisdom of God, who will judge those who never had the chance to hear the Christian message on the basis of what they could have known.” This loophole made sense to me, and still does. If I tried to apply it to myself and what I knew, though, the Sunday school teacher immediately went back to the fearmongering. “Well, *you*’ve heard of it, now, so you have no excuse!”
Moving on, your point about faith being in actions rather than feelings, is commonly made among my sect of Buddhists. (See www.sgi-usa.org if you are curious, especially www.sgi.org/buddhism/buddhism.html)
I guess I confused you with my “anthropormorphic characterization of the universe”. I was attempting to use Christian terminology for “how the universe works”. What I have always believed, with or without the existence of God, is that there is a law of justice. I see karma as the manifestation of that. Why is a conscious Being necessary for a moral law of justice to function, any more than it is for the law of gravity to function? All that said, I certainly never believed in a purely material universe.
As for the origin of the universe, the stock answer in my sect is, that is a question for science, not for religion. Go ahead and consider that “weaseling out”. It is not a question I worry about; I assume that the universe was always here. There may well have been a Big Bang 15 billion years ago; very well, what was the thing that “banged”, and why did it hold together until that precise moment? That’s the scientific version of “If God created the world, then who created God?” I look at those questions as scientists and theologians chasing their own tails. I’m interested in what faith can do for me here and now.
I do my prayers in the morning and evening because I’m a better person for it. I’m happier (-chuckle- though that can be hard to tell; I am generally morose at the moral and political degeneration of this society and expect very hard times for us in a few years), more considerate, more productive, and smarter. This practice is a tremendous blessing.
A comment on your final paragraph; the above is an answer to your final question. You asked where Gautama derived his sense of what was right. Let me go into a bit of theology. Our term for it is his “Buddha nature” or “the world of Buddhahood”. Tien Tai, the great scholar who wrote annotations of the Lotus Sutra, identified ten “worlds” that describe the basic life-conditions: Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger, Peace, Rapture, Learning, Realization, Bodhisattva and Buddhahood. The lower six worlds are characterized by a dependence of the person’s life condition on the conditions in his environment, while the upper four worlds are more self-determined. To describe the less self-explanatory names, “Realization” means the life-condition of a creator and “Bodhisattva” means the life-condition of a person dedicated to action to save others. “Buddhahood” means the life-condition characterized by wisdom, compassion, dedication and action. All of us spend most of our lives in one of these worlds, our basic life-condition, but can manifest any of these worlds at any moment. Our sense of right and wrong is innate within us and derives from our Buddha nature.
Dan in Corbett
My reply:
Dan, thanks so much for taking the time to continue this dialogue, and, once again, my apologies for the delay in my response.
I read much of the material on the website you listed, but I have to say my reading left me with more questions than answers. Perhaps this is, more than anything else, an issue of epistemology (the theory of knowledge and what distinguishes justified belief from opinion), but over and over again I read statements there--presumably about the nature of reality from the Buddhist worldview--for which, not only no evidence was offered, but, even worse in my view, no underlying system of logic was presented. For instance, on the Buddhist Practice page it says, "Buddhism teaches that a universal Law (Dharma) underlies everything in the universe. This is the very essence of life." Uh, okay. Why?
Another example on the Karma page: "Karma can be thought of as our core personality, the profound tendencies that have been impressed into the deepest levels of our lives. The deepest cycles of cause and effect extend beyond the present existence; they shape the manner in which we start this life--our particular circumstances from the moment of birth--and will continue beyond our deaths. The purpose of Buddhist practice is to transform our basic life tendency in order to realize our total human potential in this lifetime and beyond." Now I presume this alludes to the karmic wheel of life, the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth (or reincarnation, in Western terms), in which, if not the personal identity or "memories" of past lives (as in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever--in other words no transmigration of "soul"), the karmic balance sheet of right and wrong deeds that make up a person's life experiences is "recycled" in a new human life. Again, no explanation or underlying system of logic is offered for how or why this is so, only the circumlocutory declaration that it is.
What I'm getting at here is that for every system of thought there are first principles, presumptions or "givens", from which the other precepts logically proceed. The Declaration of Independence is something of a logical argument based on the "self-evident truths" Thomas Jefferson named in the second paragraph. So, in the Christian system of thought, a first principle is that over and above the natural world is a "supernature," that underlying the physical world, is a "metaphysical;" and that this "supernature" over and above the natural--or material universe--is personal. This not only resonates with things we know and sense, about our own existence--i.e., that we are personal, that we have a spiritual dimension--but also underpins the logical conclusions and deductions of our worldview as a whole.
So when I read in the gospels Jesus' instruction in how to pray, and that my prayer is to a personal God whom I am to call my Father in heaven, this concept is connected in an unbroken thread of reasoning all the way back to those first principles that inform everything from my cosmology to my most basic perception of self--that I am me.
This is what leaves me so totally at loss when reading the articles on the Nichiren Buddhism website, as well as some of your own statements. If you've never believed in a purely material universe, then what is the nature of the non-material that you do believe in? Did it evolve as, presumably, you believe the material part of our universe did? If so, what were the forces or mechanisms that shaped its evolution? When you direct your chant of "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo" to your Gohonzon to awaken innate capacities and "Buddha nature," how and why is that supposed to work?
Those are some of my questions. But one last statement before I finish. You posed the question of why a conscious Being is necessary for a moral law of justice to function, any more than it is for the law of gravity to function. In capitalizing Being, I presume you are alluding to the idea of a personal God as law-giver. My answer is that when we talk about the law of gravity, our use of the word "law" is a metaphor, a somewhat poetic way of describing how nature works; and that's what we're really talking about: how things really work. In other words, when we observe physical bodies moving through space-time, this is how they behave, and we call it "gravity."
But when we talk about a moral law of justice, we are talking about something that would not exist without consciousness or personality (in the sense of "personhood"), because we're no longer talking about how things really work, we're talking about how we sense they OUGHT to work. The tragic fact is that human existence is filled with examples of people committing the most hideous moral outrages and injustices for which they are never held accountable in this life. And if you doubt what I'm saying, then take humanity and sentient consciousness out of the equation--do you see anything like a moral law of justice at work in the animal kingdom?
You ended with the statement that our sense of right and wrong is innate, with which, with a few caveats, I agree (it also seems to be greatly malleable and subject to corruption), but this begs the question: "why?" Darwinist have twisted themselves into knots trying to justify morality as a product of evolution to frankly laughable results; a cursory examination of animal society and nature plainly demonstrate that our sense of justice, equality and morality are not a product of evolution, but rather an offense to it. We are clearly speaking of an idea. Ideas are products of minds. Minds are products of consciousness. Consciousness is a product of personality--self-aware, having identity, possessing the concept of "me" as separate from others. And that brings us back to that first principle--the personal "supernature"-- for no one has ever thought of a way of deriving personality from non-personal sources.
Dan, my Buddhist friend, was kind enough to respond to my last exchange. The following is his reply.
Don, No problem on the delay in answers. I myself was a little too busy for a while to give you a properly thought-out reply.
To start with a latter point, I want to assure you I am not angry at Christians (I read “My-Road-Back” several months ago). I feel occasional twinges of anger at the collective members of a certain religious group nowadays, but it’s not Christians. When I referred to irritating habits, I was thinking of certain childraising customs, but those are neither universal among nor exclusive to Christians. And on the topic of things that are neither universal among nor exclusive to Christians, you won’t hear me accuse Christians of hypocrisy. That is a tired cliché.
I always chafed at the concept of original sin, but not being a particularly deep thinker, was only able to put a finger on it thanks to Ayn Rand. Let me get back to your reply, in the order of your points.
You must have heard the expression before, “Read your Bible. It’ll scare the hell out of you!” The *constant* fearmongering, the stories of deathbed conversions, which admittedly may be overemphasized in the materials presented to children, the handwaving over the fate awaiting those who lived without ever having the chance to hear the Biblical message, and the injustice that I mentioned in my previous comment was what convinced me that there was something essential missing. The “handwaving” was basically, “We need to trust in the mercy and wisdom of God, who will judge those who never had the chance to hear the Christian message on the basis of what they could have known.” This loophole made sense to me, and still does. If I tried to apply it to myself and what I knew, though, the Sunday school teacher immediately went back to the fearmongering. “Well, *you*’ve heard of it, now, so you have no excuse!”
Moving on, your point about faith being in actions rather than feelings, is commonly made among my sect of Buddhists. (See www.sgi-usa.org if you are curious, especially www.sgi.org/buddhism/buddhism.html)
I guess I confused you with my “anthropormorphic characterization of the universe”. I was attempting to use Christian terminology for “how the universe works”. What I have always believed, with or without the existence of God, is that there is a law of justice. I see karma as the manifestation of that. Why is a conscious Being necessary for a moral law of justice to function, any more than it is for the law of gravity to function? All that said, I certainly never believed in a purely material universe.
As for the origin of the universe, the stock answer in my sect is, that is a question for science, not for religion. Go ahead and consider that “weaseling out”. It is not a question I worry about; I assume that the universe was always here. There may well have been a Big Bang 15 billion years ago; very well, what was the thing that “banged”, and why did it hold together until that precise moment? That’s the scientific version of “If God created the world, then who created God?” I look at those questions as scientists and theologians chasing their own tails. I’m interested in what faith can do for me here and now.
I do my prayers in the morning and evening because I’m a better person for it. I’m happier (-chuckle- though that can be hard to tell; I am generally morose at the moral and political degeneration of this society and expect very hard times for us in a few years), more considerate, more productive, and smarter. This practice is a tremendous blessing.
A comment on your final paragraph; the above is an answer to your final question. You asked where Gautama derived his sense of what was right. Let me go into a bit of theology. Our term for it is his “Buddha nature” or “the world of Buddhahood”. Tien Tai, the great scholar who wrote annotations of the Lotus Sutra, identified ten “worlds” that describe the basic life-conditions: Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger, Peace, Rapture, Learning, Realization, Bodhisattva and Buddhahood. The lower six worlds are characterized by a dependence of the person’s life condition on the conditions in his environment, while the upper four worlds are more self-determined. To describe the less self-explanatory names, “Realization” means the life-condition of a creator and “Bodhisattva” means the life-condition of a person dedicated to action to save others. “Buddhahood” means the life-condition characterized by wisdom, compassion, dedication and action. All of us spend most of our lives in one of these worlds, our basic life-condition, but can manifest any of these worlds at any moment. Our sense of right and wrong is innate within us and derives from our Buddha nature.
Dan in Corbett
My reply:
Dan, thanks so much for taking the time to continue this dialogue, and, once again, my apologies for the delay in my response.
I read much of the material on the website you listed, but I have to say my reading left me with more questions than answers. Perhaps this is, more than anything else, an issue of epistemology (the theory of knowledge and what distinguishes justified belief from opinion), but over and over again I read statements there--presumably about the nature of reality from the Buddhist worldview--for which, not only no evidence was offered, but, even worse in my view, no underlying system of logic was presented. For instance, on the Buddhist Practice page it says, "Buddhism teaches that a universal Law (Dharma) underlies everything in the universe. This is the very essence of life." Uh, okay. Why?
Another example on the Karma page: "Karma can be thought of as our core personality, the profound tendencies that have been impressed into the deepest levels of our lives. The deepest cycles of cause and effect extend beyond the present existence; they shape the manner in which we start this life--our particular circumstances from the moment of birth--and will continue beyond our deaths. The purpose of Buddhist practice is to transform our basic life tendency in order to realize our total human potential in this lifetime and beyond." Now I presume this alludes to the karmic wheel of life, the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth (or reincarnation, in Western terms), in which, if not the personal identity or "memories" of past lives (as in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever--in other words no transmigration of "soul"), the karmic balance sheet of right and wrong deeds that make up a person's life experiences is "recycled" in a new human life. Again, no explanation or underlying system of logic is offered for how or why this is so, only the circumlocutory declaration that it is.
What I'm getting at here is that for every system of thought there are first principles, presumptions or "givens", from which the other precepts logically proceed. The Declaration of Independence is something of a logical argument based on the "self-evident truths" Thomas Jefferson named in the second paragraph. So, in the Christian system of thought, a first principle is that over and above the natural world is a "supernature," that underlying the physical world, is a "metaphysical;" and that this "supernature" over and above the natural--or material universe--is personal. This not only resonates with things we know and sense, about our own existence--i.e., that we are personal, that we have a spiritual dimension--but also underpins the logical conclusions and deductions of our worldview as a whole.
So when I read in the gospels Jesus' instruction in how to pray, and that my prayer is to a personal God whom I am to call my Father in heaven, this concept is connected in an unbroken thread of reasoning all the way back to those first principles that inform everything from my cosmology to my most basic perception of self--that I am me.
This is what leaves me so totally at loss when reading the articles on the Nichiren Buddhism website, as well as some of your own statements. If you've never believed in a purely material universe, then what is the nature of the non-material that you do believe in? Did it evolve as, presumably, you believe the material part of our universe did? If so, what were the forces or mechanisms that shaped its evolution? When you direct your chant of "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo" to your Gohonzon to awaken innate capacities and "Buddha nature," how and why is that supposed to work?
Those are some of my questions. But one last statement before I finish. You posed the question of why a conscious Being is necessary for a moral law of justice to function, any more than it is for the law of gravity to function. In capitalizing Being, I presume you are alluding to the idea of a personal God as law-giver. My answer is that when we talk about the law of gravity, our use of the word "law" is a metaphor, a somewhat poetic way of describing how nature works; and that's what we're really talking about: how things really work. In other words, when we observe physical bodies moving through space-time, this is how they behave, and we call it "gravity."
But when we talk about a moral law of justice, we are talking about something that would not exist without consciousness or personality (in the sense of "personhood"), because we're no longer talking about how things really work, we're talking about how we sense they OUGHT to work. The tragic fact is that human existence is filled with examples of people committing the most hideous moral outrages and injustices for which they are never held accountable in this life. And if you doubt what I'm saying, then take humanity and sentient consciousness out of the equation--do you see anything like a moral law of justice at work in the animal kingdom?
You ended with the statement that our sense of right and wrong is innate, with which, with a few caveats, I agree (it also seems to be greatly malleable and subject to corruption), but this begs the question: "why?" Darwinist have twisted themselves into knots trying to justify morality as a product of evolution to frankly laughable results; a cursory examination of animal society and nature plainly demonstrate that our sense of justice, equality and morality are not a product of evolution, but rather an offense to it. We are clearly speaking of an idea. Ideas are products of minds. Minds are products of consciousness. Consciousness is a product of personality--self-aware, having identity, possessing the concept of "me" as separate from others. And that brings us back to that first principle--the personal "supernature"-- for no one has ever thought of a way of deriving personality from non-personal sources.
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