Quibbling

Seven thousand

2012-01-22T19:43:00.003-07:00

I heard the story of Elijah's flight from Jezebel again today. The odd thing that struck me had to do with how we view the "literalness" of the Scripture text. Specifically, is God's reference to the 7,000 who have not bowed to Baal a precise number or is it a number that illustrates a point to Elijah and those who followed after him?

The exact question that popped into my head was, "Would Elijah have been more encouraged by a precise number (like a census) or by knowing that God had preserved a complete number of faithful people?" What if the text said, "I have reserved 2,863 in all Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal"? Or "I have reserved 64,551 in all Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal"?

I think real encouragement comes from knowing that the completeness and perfection of God's remnant has been preserved. The way this number works is 7 x 10 x 10 x 10. Seven and ten are significant in themselves, but a thousand is also important as a complete number. So 7,000 would have told Elijah, "You are not alone. I have preserved exactly the people who needed to be preserved in order to accomplish my purposes."

This gets back to the doctrinal question. Is it a lie if it's not a precise number? Or did God pick the number and then ensure that there actually were 7,000? Or is the Bible not a product of late Modernism? I've long been an "inspired, inerrant" kind of Bible guy. I still am, but I think the definitions are changing. I now tend to see the importance of the number as one that communicates best to Elijah, and in this case, it's emotionally rather than numerically.

Editorial Ponzi scheme

2011-11-29T21:06:00.003-07:00

I was talking with an editorial colleague today about the feeling we get when we find a somewhat obscure error in a text, whether it's a newspaper article or a more permanent medium, such as a book. I think superiority is a good description. It's a cross of "How could they be so stupid/blind?" and "I'm sure glad I'm not that stupid/blind. Also, if it were profitable for me, that company should hire me."

In an experience based society, we always crave the next high, and that little charge that grammarians get when they catch a mistake can carry them for a while. It's almost like a currency, it's so valuable. But there's a problem.

Inevitably, I will miss a mistake in a manuscript I'm working on, or in my valorous editorial work, I will introduce an error. Somehow, it becomes just a mistake for me, and that's natural, and it's okay, and I'll do better next time, and really, seriously, believe me, please, I'm not stupid or incompetent.

Notice how when the paper is in my wallet, it's not currency? In the hands of the uphill editor, there's no value, but when the text is presented to another, there is suddenly opportunity for real value. But the value is not real. That person could hand the text down the line to someone who will find a different error that the previous editor insists doesn't mean much.

When dealing in a medium of exchange for commodities or services, this is criminal fraud—that only stupid people get involved with, right?

What makes it so different when we deal this way in words and ideas? I do get annoyed with the declining editorial standards in media, but I have been learning to not place a value on others' mistakes. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt that I so generously offer myself.

We should all strive for excellence, but not for the purpose of propping up insecure egos. Otherwise, absorbed in hedging our own egotistic positions, we will collectively turn out such poor quality work that we end up with zero value.

Water and bridges

2011-11-17T21:44:00.000-07:00

I was typing an e-mail the other day, and I naturally felt the urge to combine two cliches in a unique and thought-provoking (to me) way. Okay, so, natural for me, but probably just weird to the reader and everyone else.

However, I enjoy the result of the combination, as it describes the nexus of time and event. People who obsess over personality often term themselves or others as "time-oriented" or "event-oriented." While my new not-yet-cliche doesn't deal specifically with that aspect of personality, it brings an awareness of time and an attention to the event. Yet it's also a bit carefree about time, and given the usual context of the central cliche, it gives a strange sense of preregret. After all the setup . . .

We'll cross the water going under that bridge when we come to it.

Good and evil

2011-10-21T09:46:00.002-06:00

Our daughter has been getting into flipping light switches the last week or so. She can carry her chair to a switch, stand on it, and flip the switches. And she loves it!

A couple of weeks ago, we had an enormous fan installed in our ceiling, and for various reasons we don't want Evadel to turn it on. So now there's a switch plate with three switches, and she is not allowed to flip any of those switches. We had to take her around the house last night and show her all the switches she could flip, and then we reminded her of the one set of switches she can't flip.

It was a sad reminder of the futility of prohibitions dating all the way back to the first prohibition. It felt very formulaic: "You are free to flip any of the switches in the house, but you must not flip the switch of the knowledge of good and evil . . ."

Concurrent prognostication

2011-10-15T23:23:00.003-06:00

For a while, I've had a distaste for the media's micromeddling in the state of the economy. They do influence the economy by trying to buoy confidence, but that prevents cause and effect from providing true consequence for policies and activities. (The same goes for the so-called bailouts.)

I finally figured out what troubles me about this. It's the practice of "concurrent prognostication." Journalists, pop economists, and politicians are all trying to foretell the future so they can manipulate something today so that the future will fit their vision so they can be heroes. Okay, maybe that last part is a little too dramatic. But they are afraid to let the world/economy/history/culture breathe. They put everything into understanding in the present what normally takes years or decades to discover. And when they intervene based on that hasty knowledge, I think it compounds the negative effects they were trying to avoid.

I'm not sure what the best fix is. In such an integrated world, it is probably smart to take steps to prevent collapses. Unfortunately, it seems we waited til we stepped just over the edge to start considering ideas to keep us away from the precipice.

Love and (versus) justice

2011-10-03T10:24:00.003-06:00

The two most talked about traits of God these days are love and justice. Or love versus justice. This most often crops up in the bipolar discussion of whether God will save everyone in the end or whether he will punish some endlessly. So religious pundits call out their reasons for one or the other understanding of God.

I follow the Hebrew understanding that they are part of an integrated whole. But does one spring from the other? If so, I can certainly see justice springing out of love—a desire for the right treatment of those around me because I love them. But in no way do I see love springing out of justice. It just wouldn't happen. So to those who claim that at the most fundamental level God is just—more so than loving—I would encourage them to consider whether the kind of love that God displays toward his creation could ever originate from their conception of his justice.

In the end, God may punish certain communities endlessly. My proposal that God is love first does not negate the fact that he could bring retribution. But we need to (lovingly) quash logical fallacies before they twist our thinking further.

Objective truth

2011-08-09T21:43:00.003-06:00

I had lunch today with my World Religions professor from last summer. She has an amazing mind, and I imagine we will be hearing a lot from her in years to come. We were talking a bit about truth, and it made me think of how I was trained to do evangelism.

The very best kind of truth that anyone can have is "objective" truth, no? That's the stuff we whip out when we want to shout down an atheist. However, if we chase the origin of that phrase, it seems that the observer of the objective truth must be the subject. In that apologetics paradigm, I'm uncomfortable allowing those subjects to be free, active subjects, because I've become disenchanted with how their worldview impacts the world. Even if God is the prototypical subject and we assert that objective truth is his, we still have to take a subjective position in order to define that truth.

The problem with that truth model is that it pushes every un-self-reflective subject into the position of object. So if I'm an old guard apologist, I see the object that needs to be converted, I grab the truth object off the shelf, and I try to get the two objects to play well with one another. It dehumanizes the human object, and it perverts what truth is.

This is where Dr. Ireland's thinking is valuable. She—confessedly borrowing and assimilating from many others—says that truth is a relational endeavor between subjects in which both subjects are transformed from their previous stases. I leave out some other key details in anticipation of her book being published. The point is, if we humbly see ourselves as subjects interacting with other subjects, the felt threat of evangelism is diminished. I'm not advocating some new "subjective truth" fad (which is actually very well in vogue). There is a time for everything. A time to be a subject, and a time to be an object. It's simply that our brothers (and usually not sisters, interestingly) who crow about objective truth need to stop objectifying truth and allow it to be the living, relational being we observe in the Bible—Jesus of Nazareth. When we allow him as subjective truth into our interactions, we can't help being transformed.

Sexual ethics and evolution

2011-08-01T23:30:00.003-06:00

I'll begin by clarifying some of my comments on the Spirit's role in evolution two posts prior. First, this little line of enquiry is entirely experimental. It's a "suppose if" about the fact of evolution, although I am becoming more and more convinced of its veracity. Second, I hold strongly to creative, covenantal monotheism (the deity being YHWH, the God of Israel), and I don't think evolution diminishes this god's power, authority, or prestige in any way. In fact, the creative Spirit is given more room to work, and the only thing stopping him is creatures who are evolutionarily defiant. That is, they choose not to keep the standard of fully evolved humanity and instead revert to animalism.

Now, regarding sexuality, we see in the animal kingdom many different expressions. There's one fish, which in the right circumstance, can reproduce asexually, that is, with no sex act but the necessary sex cells are provided solely by the female. Other species, such as cattle, elk, elephants, gorillas, etc., have a dominant male who spreads his genetics to the females in order to ensure the survival of the species. I've heard that some eagles and cranes may mate for life. We see almost this full diversity of reproductive behavior in humans (which I'm using for Homo sapiens partially realized, not necessarily "fully human"). In fact, Bloodhound Gang has memorably expressed an "unevolved" sexuality with the line, "You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel."

So what if we "just do what comes naturally"? I think we fulfill a valid heritage from our ancestry. The Biology of Sin has been immensely helpful to my thinking in this regard. Accomplished neuroscientist Matt Stanford takes the concept of sinful behavior and chases down what is happening in the human body when the sin becomes compulsive. I cringe every time I think this, but perhaps those who follow their instincts are simply not as evolved as people who do not. (Caveat: More highly evolved people in this schema would also be humble. Also, we all lack evolution in some ways. Those who know me know that I can't control my tongue, making me a foolish communicator. But by God's Spirit, I am evolving.) So the compulsion that most guys feel to look at a woman a second time is probably a survival mechanism. It's his body's deep way of attempting to preserve what it assumes is some awesome DNA.

This leads to the question of the "fittest" that get to survive. There is a myth out there that people who limit their behavior for religious reasons are pansies. Actually, these people have more self-control, and they're following a blueprint for the most successful possible human existence. While animal behavior turns to infighting to prove dominance . . . Let's start over here. That sounds too much like a human office. Less evolved forms of life fight amongst themselves to prove dominance, get the best mate, secure the best domicile, etc. For gorillas, the proving of dominance is perfectly natural. It is the thing they do for their species to survive. But humans have ingenuity. This leads to medicine, which leads to someone like me with crappy DNA that causes diabetes to survive long enough to procreate and saddle their sweet little girl with a higher chance of developing diabetes. We can find ways to procreate and survive that don't involve beating our chests and shouting. Although, adolescent males don't often figure that out till much later.

So what is the profile of the "fittest" according to the New Testament? Be humble and gentle. Love. Serve. Give up your life for others. And Jesus alludes to exactly that: "The one who seeks to preserve their biological life will lose it. But the one who holds to biological life loosely will be rewarded with more satisfying life now and excellent life in the age to come." What is the effect of this behavior in human community? Peace. Flourishing. But beware the moment a gorilla in a man suit comes in trying to take control or prove something. Fear invades. People start getting defensive. Everyone begins to look down in their hands at that precious little thing called survival, and they clutch it tighter. And survival dies a little. That community just experienced evolutionary regression.

Now what about the fittest human sexuality? (Not necessarily what Ali G is describing when he calls a woman "fit.") I'm only going to attempt to describe this from a male perspective, because it's what I live every day. It's a trusting, committed relationship in which offspring can be borne who will learn the parents' fit behavioral traits and hopefully get nice genes along the way. The male will still look at women other than his wife and feel a procreative urge. But he tells himself thankfully that the Creator has supplied a fit partner with whom the family has an excellent chance of survival. And then he realizes that if he were to tend toward more basic mammalianism that he could possibly lose everything that he in his fitness has striven for.

So is sanctification evolution? I kind of like that idea. Regardless, our lives are all cradled in the hand of God. But as humans begin to willingly behave as God requests, we look more and more like the ideal human, Jesus. We don't necessarily need to become X-Men in order to have taken an evolutionary step. I believe Homo sapiens is the most biologically evolved species, even if we may not be the strongest or the fastest mammals. What makes us different is the complexity of behavior and communication that can enhance our survivability. So I think it is behavior that is the penultimate horizon of evolution. The only evolving that remains after that is for God's kingdom to become fully present at the resurrection.

Insanity and biblical wisdom/poetry authorship

2011-08-01T12:43:00.003-06:00

I've recently begun to internalize the scholarly consensus about the authorship of books such as Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. The basic idea is that later composers (or even the culture at large) would attribute their work to an author to lend credence to their work and to honor them as the paragon of their tradition. For instance, David was seen as the greatest of YHWH's worshippers. Solomon was seen as the wisest at the head of a wisdom tradition. Doubtless, David wrote some psalms, and Solomon wrote many proverbs. But it's problematic to insist that every header in the Psalms that says "Of David" means that he sat down and composed it. (Never mind the fact that the preposition may not mean David wrote it, but it may mean that the psalm was composed "for David" or in his honor.)

Where does insanity come in? You've probably heard Albert Einstein's famous definition: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Problem is, the first place scholars can locate something like this sentence is in a Narcotics Anonymous handout from 1981. (See this site.) Why bring Einstein into this? He was a very, very smart man. He lends credence to my saying the aphorism. And nobody really wants to refer to NA in conversation.

This current example illustrates very well how biblical literature could have been attributed to famous people from the past. It just seems like the right thing to do.

The Spirit's role in evolution

2011-07-31T16:38:00.002-06:00

I've been mulling the evolution/large early human community thing (cover article "The Search for the Historical Adam" in Christianity Today a few weeks ago). It was my observation of how some parents treat their children and how I treat Evadel sometimes that lead to my latest thought.

Presupposing an evolutionary model, in the beginning, or some time after the beginning, God breathed his spirit/breath into some primates and made the first human community. When they disobeyed, they died, or perhaps God's breath simply left them, and they went back to whatever advanced primatic state they were in. Let's look forward to another time when God's breath came powerfully upon people. Acts describes people loving and caring for one another in evolutionarily impossible ways, seemingly. Or at least their social behavior was counterintuitive, but it was the sociological evolution that God was directing.

Regarding parenting, it's interesting that nonhuman species show different parenting characteristics. Some parents eat their young. Others abandon the kids to fend for themselves. Still others hang with their brood for years to give them the best opportunity for survival. When we think of human parenting, "good" parents equip their children with the best tools they can to support survival and thriving. (I really wanted to say "thrival.") However, we see alcoholic—or abusive, or otherwise dysfunctional—parents teaching terrible behavior patterns to their children. These children have their own children, and they often exhibit the exact same parenting tendencies.

Theologically, we could say that abusive parenting is sinful. Or we could say that God's breath does not animate such parenting, even if this Spirit is present, sometimes protecting young psyches, sometimes restraining awful behavior. (And sadly, children still die at the hands of their parents today.) But think about some of the accounts in the First Testament. Parents would place their babies in the red-hot arms of flaming Molech idols. That's terrible parenting. That's worse than anything we see in the animal kingdom. Other animals, as far as I know, do not use technology to invent ways of torturing and disposing of their young.

This leads me to wonder if awful parenting, for instance, shows evolutionary regression. Other examples would include leaders committing genocide (physical in despotic regimes or emotional in workplaces), spouses speaking harshly to one another, and taking something illicitly to enrich oneself. (Strangely, this model of evolutionary regression is also called sin.) Humans have the choice to let the Breath of God animate them, or they can seize the fruit and declare that they can handle the differentiation between good and evil.

I've heard antievolutionists say, "Well, if evolution were true, why haven't we evolved into something else?" I wonder if it's because we've squeezed the Spirit of God out of the lungs of our communities.

Geography-based congregations

2011-07-30T23:46:00.003-06:00

I've been processing my "personal" ecclesiology for a couple of years now, mostly in my brain's down time. Today I had a thought breakthrough. I was talking about a book I am proofing, which is entitled "Dead Church Walking" by Jimmy Dorrell.

One of my big vexations about church is the apparent complete lack of unity. Even if there is a little church which members get along well, serve each other, and serve the world, the congregation is still likely at odds with other congregations in the same town, probably because of theology.

I know that denominationalism emerged from the inability of disagreed parties to find common ground. That was probably fair when the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church was intractably corrupt and wouldn't listen to any critique. Luther didn't set out to found a new church; he simply wanted reform. But after a few splits over seemingly important issues, it became very easy to split just because parties didn't like each other during a disagreement. Now denominations (at least in America) seem to serve theological tastes, just as building, music, and preaching styles serve aesthetic tastes. Those are a few categories among which an individual can base their church attendance decisions.

However, one huge factor in church choice is transportation. With relatively cheap fuel prices, most people have no qualms traveling across town to their favorite church (selected on the above criteria). And here is the key move: the ability to traverse geography easily makes congregational diversity less likely. If I'm going to drive to church, I'm probably going to choose to mass with people who are rather like me.

I think one important way to encourage diversity is to commit to attending a truly local church. What if Americans did not travel further than one mile to their place of worship? They would be forced to relate with whichever people live near them. You are probably wondering about communities that are completely homogeneous regarding race, economic class, etc. I wonder about those too. I'm not sure I have an answer to that question. But as I look at my neighbors, there is incredible ethnic diversity in the two-house radius all the way around. If we were to meet as a house church, we wouldn't have the issues of ethnic homogeneity. However, we would all be middle-class suburbanites. But the important point is that we wouldn't be able to choose who we're with. I think taking some choice away from people—especially those in "higher" classes in America—would help to move focus off of self and onto really being the church.

Perhaps if people began to have their choice of church limited a bit, they may then choose to move into a more diverse setting where worldviews and skin colors are truly diverse. We may stop quibbling about minor points of theology because there would be much bigger preferences to sort out. And I think people would be less likely to break fellowship since they wouldn't be "standing for the truth" as much as discussing matters of taste. And this may be a small step toward a unified body of Jesus from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

Christianese

2011-06-29T11:48:00.003-06:00

I was in a meeting this morning where the topic of Christianese came up. One person mentioned how people's hearts are crying out to be authentic, but all they can do is speak the language of the church (or pseudochurch?) in order to not look bad or to be accepted.

Wasn't this exactly what Russia did in the Ukraine or Germany did in the Czech Republic? There was an imperial regime language that was required to be spoken or else very bad things would happen. The native tongue was spoken only in the most intimate, secretive settings for fear of being found out and punished.

Worse than that, perhaps, many good people are forced to keep their innermost thoughts to themselves because they fear being ostracized if they are honest. These people can't even find the "soulmates" with whom they can be honest because they have never spoken a common mother tongue of honesty with anyone else.

The church is meant to be a place of honesty and authenticity. It's the one place of all places where we should be able to share our deepest hearts with one another and seek healing and redemption.

As I look across the religious landscape in America (which is the one context I can address with some authority), I see Christianese as the de jure language—and in many ways, it has become the de facto language. The region is ripe for regime change.

Celebrity politicians

2011-06-28T09:34:00.003-06:00

I was walking through a store last night and saw Bristol Palin's book. I mentioned to my wife how silly our celebrity culture is, and she noted Sarah Palin's TV show. I got to thinking, were there celebrities in the Bible?

The first one that came to mind was Absalom. Not only was he a celebrity, he was a celebrity politician. He set up a statue of himself, was kind to the disenfranchised, and was a total chick magnet. Everything was set for him to overthrow his dad for the kingship. But one thing led to another, as it so often does, and he ended up hanging in a tree by his hair and getting stabbed with three spears.

With the number of politicians we've seen recently literally hanging from figurative trees by their metaphorical hair, I wonder how much of this is tied to seeking celebrity. Is vanity enough of an instability of character that it needs to be accompanied by risky behavior that will inevitably lead to a fall? Or, as Ecclesiastes says, does time and chance happen to us all, and a proportional amount of the anonymous populace screws up in exactly the same way and rate as their representative sampling of elected representatives? Is it the much maligned 24-hour news cycle that won't permit relatively private ignominy of public figures?

The Palin family have become the darlings of a segment of the population, the hated targets of another, and the family that another segment wishes would stick strictly to their private lives and leave the world alone. Regardless, I fear that there is enough instability of character in the celebrity seeking that someone will do something really stupid. And I never want to see anyone—friend or foe—do something really stupid.

I haven't covered 12 percent of the angles on celebrity, but if you'd like to add something, I'd be curious to hear it. I'd be especially curious to hear who you think are more celebrities from the Bible.

Internet leaves litter version of phone search obsolete

2011-06-27T22:44:00.003-06:00

As I was driving today, I saw a van with the name "A All Animal Control." That immediately tells me this company violated grammar conventions in order to make it to the top of their category in the Yellow Pages. ["Yellow Pages? What's that?"] They probably chose this because "AAA Animal Control" was already taken in our town. This is yet another cultural artifact left obsolete by internet searches. Who wouldn't search for "animal control [town name]"? No need to win the alphabetizing game in that case.

Is Google's algorithm screwing you?

2011-06-27T22:33:00.004-06:00

I read an article today about Americans having trouble getting helpful information on NT Wright when they searched for him. I thought this odd, given that the internets should give the most relevant information about a topic. And there's the rub. In today's algorithm, most relevant has to do with where your IP address is located and what those with IP addresses in your geographical locale have searched for. So news posted from UK IP addresses is virtually inaccessible to Americans, since they're unable to see the most accurate news post in their search results list.

This fact renders some of the most pertinent websites inaccessible, not due to the inability of the user to type, but due to their inability to see the searched site. Today's new word: hinternets. Example: The search algorithm left my site in the hinternets because it was busy selling crap to the people who actually wanted to see what I posted.

Live Better Stories

2011-06-08T10:49:00.001-06:00

I visited my college roommate up in Vail over the weekend, and we went to the Teva Games (sponsored by what was originally the footwear company). I picked up their soundtrack CD, and it had the phrase "Live Better Stories" on it. Turns out it's their tagline.

I was startled by this, since I live in the Christian realm, and I thought it was people like Walter Brueggemann and N. T. Wright theologizing about story and Don Miller bringing it to an intensely practical application. In some ways, I subconsciously thought "story" was an "Emergent theology."

So what's up with Teva? Why are they so enamored with story? I think they are tapping into a rich craving that people have, which some Christians have been working with. So it's not just religious groups talking about living better stories.

Shane Hipps, author of Flickering Pixels, was an ad executive who handled the BMW account. He decided to bail when he realized that having the power to make a grown man cry using a BMW commercial wasn't all it was cracked up to be. But somehow, Teva has produced a profoundly religious—actually, profoundly human—video without Christian overtones. And it made me cry.

It's so beautiful to encourage people to be fully alive. I would protest that the activities in the video aren't the only way to be alive, but they are still a very important avenue. And for those of us Christians who are into creational living, we have a touchpoint here.

Live Better Stories.

A hermeneutic of versejacking

2011-05-30T22:36:00.003-06:00

On this blog, each post "of late" has come with some disclaimer. This time, it is "I will be through seminary in less than two weeks."

My last reading assignment has shed light on a question that has vexed me for years. The assignment was “Were the English Puritans the ‘Saints of the Most High’?” by W. Sibley Towner. I'm pasting below a modified version of a homework question on the reading.

On one level, the article points out that it is perilous to force correspondence of every detail between a Scripture text and an event. Prophetic visions aren’t to be taken as prenarration or even allegory. The article aims to take the edge off the fact that millennia of Scriptural interpretation have gone against what seem to be sane exegetical principles. It speaks to my issues with interpretation. I describe my tension with the title of an essay written by John Walton (now of Wheaton): “Inspired Subjectivity vs. Hermeneutical Objectivity.” What made it okay for Peter to say, “For it is written in the Book of Psalms: ‘May his place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in it,’ and, ‘May another take his place of leadership,’” which are two versejacks extraordinaires, but I intuitively know that what many interpreters do to texts is simply similar violence? The only difference seems to be that Peter was inspired, and since the canon is now closed, none of the rest of us is permitted to ravage the text to carry off our own edificatory plunder. Where Towner’s article succeeds is in offering a plausible alternative to this tormented worldview. Of late I’ve been wrestling with certain African hermeneutics where it seems Spirit-filled people are truly enlightened by their terrible exegesis. Why can’t the Spirit work in his people this way? So Towner says we should see both sides of the exegetical transaction as serving a greater reality. The greater reality is God’s grand purpose in his creation, and a valid interpretation of a text is one that corresponds in a similar way with the ethos of God’s creative and redemptive work. So the text and the interpretation are both equidistant from the greater reality. It so happens that the text is canonized and thus scrutinized till kingdom come. I’m not yet willing to say I fully agree with this, but it is such a refreshing alternative to a decade of wrestling that I must consider it.

Paul and replacement theology

2011-02-23T23:36:00.002-07:00

I've been discussing so-called replacement theology with some friends recently. In short, its opponents tag the idea that "the church replaces Israel in God's plan" as replacement theology, even though this is probably an unfair simplification of a quite complex issue. I don't have time to write a treatise of my position (at the moment), so I'll merely share some thoughts that emerged from reading one little phrase in 1 Corinthians. I hereby affirm that I don't think I'm doing violence to the text or context by focusing only on these few words.

The topic is the monetary collection at the end of 1 Corinthians. Presumably the beneficiaries of the collection would be predominantly Jews, because they were poor Jesus followers in Judea. (Any Romans/Gentiles would probably be merchants or soldiers with enough income to get by.) Notice how Paul refers to them: "Now about the collection for the Lord's people."

What denotes "Lord's people"? Jesus followers in general? Nope. This is specifically about believers in Judea. Any believers in Judea? Not really. I don't think Paul was necessarily putting a burden on Christians throughout the empire merely because there were needy persons who were Christians who happened to live in Judea.

My understanding of this may not be completely solid, but I think there's something more going on here. I think "Lord's people" refers mainly to Jewish Messiah followers. But why the enigmatic special designation? Why not "Now about the collection for the Messiah followers in Judea"? At this early stage, it appears Paul had a appreciation for the Jewish ethnicity that brought us Jesus. They got a special designation that theologically could apply to all but really does apply to some specifically.

I don't think we could accuse this early Paul of rapacious replacement theology. He still did honor the Jewish ethnicity, even if "Israel" was already being redefined as anyone who followed Jesus.

Psalm

2011-02-04T09:57:00.002-07:00

I'm taking a class on spiritual disciplines, and this week's project was to write a psalm. I take my inspiration from this Gungor song, and particularly from the album cover art.

Creator YHWH,
All things are yours;
All exists at your word.

You craft the delicate flower;
You form the mountain ranges.

By your love and pleasure
Beauty springs forth from the earth.

Your tiniest image begins to create;
You create creativity itself.

Creator YHWH,
All things rebel;
All antagonizes each.

Petals fall;
The crags quake.

Against your great love and care
The earth groans its dissent.

Your image conceives evil;
It unmakes that composed at your command.

Creator YHWH,
All things are made new;
All will praise your Name.

The disintegrated is knit together;
The twisted coalesces into beauty.

Because of your love and mercy
Your creation is restored.

You indwell your image
Who shares in maturing beauty.

Creator YHWH,
All things are yours;
All testifies to your glory.

Platonic button

2011-01-26T12:55:00.003-07:00

I just realized that all the books that Amazon recommends for me are business books varying from crappy to somewhat respected. I was a bit shocked until I realized that I have been scouring this genre to search inside the books to verify bibliographic data for my job.

What if I want to see recommendations for books I actually want to read?

I propose a "platonic button." When I'm going to Amazon for strictly professional reasons, I click the button. Then when I'm done, I can click it again, assuming my next search is for something I would be genuinely interested in.

NFL gospel plan

2010-12-20T11:11:00.003-07:00

I saw this gospel plan lead in on nfl.com yesterday.

I didn’t feel the gospel was presented very clearly. It was basically a chart, but what do you expect nowadays?

I did see that the Chiefs will be justified by works, if at all.

Happy December!

2010-12-01T20:26:00.004-07:00

Hard to believe we're round to December again. Everybody talks about how fast time flies, but I have to chip in my affirmation.

Evadel is now one year old. She will not stop walking until she falls on the floor on her back with her arms outstretched.

I know all parents probably think their child is a genius. Theory: We have such low expectations of our little poop machines that when they start doing something uniquely human, we exclaim, "Omigosh, she's brilliant!" Granted, it is fun to see rudimentary cognition and refining motor skills, but I'm trying to change my perspective. I think I should expect geniusly human behavior in order to encourage her blossoming humanity, and I should delight in her progress. (Don't get me wrong; human babies are always human babies. I'm talking about features that make us unique from other species.) But I should not try to make Evadel be a Bible quiz bowl maven just to relive my glory days.

December brings me to four classes left in my Master's. Medication has helped me catch up at work to the point that I see a more human existence approaching on the horizon. Between school and work, I have precious little free time, so I savor the moments away from the busyness. But I'm very excited about the beginning of next summer when I will graduate and be totally caught up at work. It's going to be such a foreign experience to live a motivated life without terapascals of pressure.

I have a hunch that without all the craziness, daily/weekly observation of time will slow, and I may enjoy life more. It goes without saying that the pace of a monthly/annual/decadal observation of time seems to continue increasing with age.

Ignorance

2010-09-05T20:40:00.004-06:00

You know how you listen to great music, the kind of song you have heard 38 times before, and then you hear a lyric that smacks you between the eyes? (That's a strange mixing of metaphor, I know.)

I've been paying attention to ignorance lately, particularly intentional ignorance. I listened to a great podcast on the topic today: Maxie Burch from rhinocrash.org. In iTunes, the date is 8/17/09 (and followup on 8/23/09, titled Tensions weeks 3 and 4). Maxie's theme is elephants in the room. He notes the very real spiritual aspect of them and how damaging ignorance is when we avoid issues/problems out of fear, anger, or pain. I highly recommend you listen to them.

So the song. I'm listening to Ben Folds, hoping some driving piano will help me feel motivated to work on my final papers for Amos and Hosea. In the song "Bastard," the relevant ignorance lines play:

Close your eyes, close your ears, young man;
You've seen and heard all an old man can;
Spread the facts on the floor like a fan;
Throw away the ones that make you feel bad.

That's a fascinating insight. While I think age brings valuable observation and experience, I believe it's true that most of us ignore the stuff that makes us feel bad. There are a lot of old men out there who could have become wise, solid characters through facing pain and processing reality. Instead, they anesthetized themselves by any number of means. Intentional ignorance. Ignoring the elephant in the room. So, young man, face the facts as they present themselves. Struggle through the pain, and you will grow into great character that can change the world, or at least the worlds of those around you.

One other line from the song that is helpful is, "It's okay if you don't know everything." That's an interesting juxtaposition with the idea of intentional ignorance. But if we process knowledge and life as they come, the passage of time will yield wisdom. And one of the keys to wisdom is recognizing that we will never know everything, or anything close to that. Know-it-alls (of whom I try my hardest not to be) tend to try to control knowledge. And another theme of life I've been contemplating is how destructive the impulse to control can be.

It's best to hold knowledge loosely, but it's destructive to hold your hands up saying, "No thanks."

Animals and the new creation

2010-09-05T18:11:00.003-06:00

In the last 24 hours, I've become much more aware of the coming concord of the animal kingdom. We've been reading Isaiah, and the last quarter of the book treats the topic of the new creation quite extensively. The most famous reference occurs early in Isaiah and at the very end: the wolf and the lamb will lie down together without any chewing on the other, and the lion and the calf will be cool.

So the awareness I mentioned is odd. It comes from popular culture. I saw a commercial yesterday during K-State's sweet win over UCLA that had all sorts of "natural" enemies drinking from a watering hole together. It's a beautiful image. (The commercial was a failure in that I don't remember the advertiser, but at least I'm looking to find out who it was.) The other reference is in Cake's "Frank Sinatra," where they sing "the flies and spiders get along together." It's an odd choice of animals, but brilliant in its freestyle on the Isainic theme.

I eagerly anticipate the new creation, and it's fun that pop culture brings my spirit back to the idea in a moment when I'm not particularly paying attention to it.

Campaign flyer

2010-07-14T21:48:00.002-06:00

For whatever reason, people think it's time to waste money and start trying to garner votes for November. I mean, yes, campaign season is warming up, but I hate it so much.

Campaign flyers come to our mailbox, and I think they follow a template. I'm sure both parties have the same template; it doesn't matter who.

They read something like this (always accompanied by a shot of the family, and especially grandchildren if possible):
Proven results!
Effective leadership!

Then for the Republican flyers, they proceed to say, "Down with big government! Lower taxes!" Since it's primary season, the Democrats aren't paying attention to these flyers. If they were, they'd say, "What the f*** are they talking about!" But they would still talk about their proven leadership or something.

If these people think that platitudes gain votes, it makes me shiver. Doesn't anyone see there's nothing substantive going on here? Cake's wacky morning DJ deservers more credit than I ever gave him for saying "Democracy's a joke."

I guess what I'm reacting to is that we don't have real options. The more shrill the parties get, the more I realize what distinguishes them is how loud they shout catchphrases. When it comes down to votes, the only thing that matters to most is money. I have to give it to them though, they do seem committed about the abortion debate. You could take a vote on something abortion related every week, and you'd get actual opinions coming out. But when it comes time to vote on spending, everyone has to protect their constituency regardless of whether they hate ballooning spending.

Okay, I'm done. I need to study.

G8 summit

2010-07-02T09:38:00.002-06:00

I was just talking with a co-worker about the Netherlands–Brazil match, clarifying whether it was in the quarterfinals or semifinals. He said, "Well, it's the group of eight, so yes, quarterfinals." To which I commented, "So the World Cup is like the G8 Summit for Third World countries."

Insensitive, maybe, but the World Cup is truly a place where a nation can invest merely millions of dollars and gain a high profile on the world stage. The other G8, your GDP has to be in the hundreds of billions or trillions.

Cash

2010-07-01T09:04:00.001-06:00

If you're promised some money, is it called a financée?

Destiny

2010-06-22T13:23:00.002-06:00

I've not posted in an inordinately long while. I'll write about that in another post.

It seemed appropriate to talk about destiny in my 200th post.

I'm discussing historic America with a co-worker, and I discovered that the best question to ask our fervent founding fathers would be "Can I see the shipping manifest to find out where your destiny came from?"

To be reconciled

2010-05-27T22:26:00.002-06:00

The cross for Christians is often a symbol of atonement. It’s the means whereby people are reconciled with God through the shedding of blood. It’s a beautiful event full of implications for today and the age to come. But honestly, it can be a bit hard to grasp why it had to happen and how it worked.

Thao and Sue are young and bright. They need a bit of direction, but otherwise they are on their way to good lives. However, they live in a gang-ridden neighborhood, which almost guarantees they won’t arrive at the good life in one piece.

Don Miller—a foremost advocate of story and how we each need to be a part of one—offers this succinct definition of story: “A Character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.”

Gran Torino points toward the future and “getting it” for Thao and Sue. But the key character in the story, Walt, is seeking his own atonement: reconciliation with himself and peace in his soul from the demons of war. In the process of connecting with his new Hmong neighbors, the trenchant racist Walt finds his elusive peace and helps them overcome the conflict, almost against their wishes. It is obvious that they won’t be able to do so themselves. This variation on classic story resonates well with the Christian message: We all need help to overcome conflict to get that something.

Crosses and blood are ubiquitous symbols in Gran Torino. At times they are mocked by characters; other times they are employed quite reverently by unlikely characters. These lead to one of the most beautiful stories of reconciliation I’ve seen—one that helpfully illustrates an answer to the questions of atonement above.

When the movie began, I feared I was in for a long two hours. Walt is such a crotchety, foul character, but as the story progressed, I felt a certain fondness for him. Clint Eastwood worked a fine masterpiece producing, directing, and acting this film. His Walt is a strong character whose development we see in fine detail. The plot is not as intricate as the characterization, but there is a strong one. Sometimes the music felt a bit obvious, but it was certainly a foreshadowing cue.

Gran Torino is not a movie for the faint of heart. I know some who would not be able to sit through the language and racism that suffuses this film. But if you can stomach these, there is a rich payoff as you let yourself live in this story of reconciliation and redemption for two hours.

Jonah

2010-05-11T23:07:00.003-06:00

So here it is, a month since my last post. I never wanted to be like this, but my life tipped into unsustainability. It's not getting better anytime soon, so I'd better post.

I wonder what tone of voice Jonah spoke in when he said, "I'm angry enough to die." This is actually quite an important question. It reveals his character, just as getting to know his character through the story reveals how he would speak this sentence. My two main thoughts for how he sounded are that he screamed this line or he deadpanned it.

If Jonah screamed, "I'm angry enough to die," I see two options. He was a petulant little girl. Or he was genuinely, utterly enraged.

If Jonah said matter-of-factly, "I'm angry enough to die," I see another three options. He was being melodramatic. He was being ironic. Or he grew up a manipulative shrew who was used to getting his own way if he spoke out of line. The latter would probably mean his mother was a hand-wringing pushover.

Whichever way we slice it, God wouldn't have it. I think God told Jonah, "You're on Candid Camera!" Or maybe he merely said, "There you are, an object lesson for all future generations. You happy now?"

In my opinion, Jonah was a whiny brat (see "melodramatic" above). I imagine the people in his hometown of Gath Hepher would have been relieved if Jonah had remained former, now digesting, fish bait. But somehow, God used this petty chump to draw repentance from an incredibly evil, powerful empire.

I truly hope that I am available for God's work, if for no other reason than to avoid being swallowed by a fish. I'm not a seafood guy.

Dragon!

2010-04-10T22:15:00.002-06:00

My wife and I went to see "How to Train Your Dragon" today. My suspicion from my previous post was barely confirmed. This movie was not made merely to make us treat "terrorists" better. But you can sure take that away from it if you want to.

I highly recommend this movie. It's cute and fun, a little tense at moments (noted for kiddos' sake), and teaches a number of great life themes. If you're predisposed to feel preachiness, it'll feel preachy, but I got caught up in the story. Some of the themes include being who you are, humility, reconciliation, and perseverance.

I HOPE I'M NOT GIVING TOO MUCH AWAY ALERT:
While the most striking part of the movie for my wife was how relationships were reconciled, the key point for me has to do with fear. The main character, Hiccup, was a nerdy waif of a Viking. He wanted more than anything else to be the best stereotypical Viking dragon fighter. However, with a bit of sensitivity and some dumb fearlessness, he discovers a way to befriend dragons. He is able to end the dragon scourge in an unconventional, yet quite fitting to his person, way. If he had kept trying to kill dragons the conventional way, he would have been a colossal failure. But because he intuitively followed fate's path for him, he became an even bigger hero than he could have imagined. And it might have been mistitled. Much more faithful to the story would have been "How to Befriend a Dragon," but I think "train" fit better for marketing purposes.

Yeah, the movie's a little moralistic, but with the good animation and storyline, it's totally worth it.

Nerdy poetry I wrote today

2010-04-09T22:40:00.002-06:00

Chi(li)asm

The millennium
Is it a thousand years long?
Or a metaphor?

It will probably
involve the wedding supper
of the ewe’s Offspring.

What’s all this besides
the consummation of the
kingdom to come?

A place of justice,
mercy, and love abounding;
fullest creation.

Bible images
telling of restoration,
reign of true human.

Spicy foods. Fitting
for a reception? Chili
makes me say, “Mmm-hmmmm.”

If it’s a thousand
or a thousand million years,
it will not matter.

How to Train Your . . .

2010-03-31T23:27:00.004-06:00

Today's blog post brought to you by blind assertions. Why not? Everyone else is doing it. [blind assertion]

Okay, so my wife and I are planning a time to go see a movie. First time to a theater since the baby was born. A little bit of a big deal. As she was scrolling through the local showings, she came across film after film we will NOT see. "She's Out Of My League" Nope. Sounds like a movie predicated on cheap sex jokes about a hot girl a dude really wants. I've lived that description, including the occasional season of life featuring the indiscreet sex joke. Yeah, there was a season change ten days ago, so? "Hot Tub Time Machine" [chirp chirp chirp]

The first movie she noted (and the one we will likely see) was "How to Train Your Dragon." She asked what it was about. I've only seen trailers for it about three times when I wasn't really paying attention (I was breathing through a paper bag during a TV timeout), which uniquely qualifies me to summarize a movie for a picky potential viewer and decide the fate of twelve bucks (um, yeah, we're going to a matinee) relative to a movie studio bean counter.

My summary started thus: "I think it's about a somewhat medieval culture where most of the people are averagely stupid and they are plagued by dragons, so everyone lives in fear, and there are some tough guys who make a name for themselves by fighting off the dragons, and then some smart kids come along and say . . ." With each passing clause I became more and more afflicted with present-time-narrative-telling-déjà vu. It actually caused me to ask whether the screen writers were presenting a blatantly moralistic tale about what we should do with terrorists.

This movie looks entertaining. I'm excited to see it, if only because we get to go to a movie. Well, actually, now I'm curious to see if my blind assertion that this movie should be titled "How to Train Your Terrorist" (only if you're an American, not Osama bin Laden, silly) can be upgraded to "assertion with slightly advanced glaucoma." Please share your non-spoiler insights if you've seen the movie.

Words

2010-03-28T21:26:00.002-06:00

I wrote in my very first post on this blog that I like to get the meaning of words right. I like to quibble a bit to make sure that people are using the same lexicon. This ensures that misunderstandings are kept to a minimum.

However, I read through 1 and 2 Timothy today, and toward the end of each letter, Paul says not to quarrel over words. I understand that there were some sh'nanigans going on with false teachers trying to get believers to follow certain practices that didn't have a place in the assembly of Jesus. But I wonder what these quarrels over words were.

From 1 Timothy: "They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain" (all references TNIV).

From 2 Timothy: "Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen."

Again I ask: What are these words? Surely we need to be able to define our terms, especially when we're trying to figure out what a third party is saying.

A prophet or dreamer

2010-03-28T20:50:00.003-06:00

As we were reading in Deuteronomy tonight, the Pharisees reaction to Jesus that we commemorate this week came into sharp relief. And it made sense.

These days, we have the benefit of never having watched an animal larger than a squirrel be killed (by a car, for instance), let alone killing the animal ourselves. We lead a very sanitized existence, and we're not trying to fit our unruly selves into a community with rather strict, and very serious standards. To the Hebrews, taking the life of an animal meant something. The Law meant something. And I only use the sacrifice picture to illustrate the bigger idea of the Law. The Sabbath was important. Somehow Jubilee seems to have been edited out of the larger consciousness of the Jewish nation, but let's be reasonable. So when Jesus came along and said people didn't need to keep the Sabbath the way they always did, the Pharisees flipped. Were they overreacting? I don't think so.

From Deuteronomy, about 1/3 of the way through:
"If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. That prophet or dreamer must be put to death for inciting rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. That prophet or dreamer tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you" (TNIV).

Granted, Jesus didn't say, "Worship this idol." But he might as well have. He was performing signs and telling the people to not follow the religion they had been taught. I now have a bit more sympathy for the Pharisees. Despite the wrong way they went about it (asking the Romans to execute justice, saying "We have no king but Caesar," thereby running as far from their God as possible), they were trying to purge the evil from among them.

This is another instance where the spotlight is turned right back on my heart. How often do I think I see things perfectly clearly, only to be shown that I only know about 58 percent of what's going on? I see the action that's necessary, and I run after it, never stopping to ask if God's trying to do something different. Yep, I'm the Pharisee. God forgive me.

Life verses

2010-03-28T20:37:00.002-06:00

For a few years now, my life verse part has been Numbers 21:16a: "From there they continued on to Beer" (all references TNIV).

As I was reading Torah at our baby's bedtime feeding tonight, I found a verse that means almost as much to me. Deuteronomy 12:20: "When the LORD your God has enlarged your territory as he promised you, and you crave meat and say, 'I would like some meat,' then you may eat as much of it as you want." AMEN!

I see my life like this. I say to a friend or a relative, "I would like some meat." We eat as much as we want. Then we continue on to beer. And my territory has been enlarged, to boot.

*DISCLAIMER*
Of course, I don't encourage misusing God's word this way. I think my three readers know this. But if you're just happening by, I encourage more and better Bible reading. Read large portions, such as whole books. Understand the historical context. Find yourself in God's great, big story of creation, uncreation, and recreation. And try my favorite beer, New Belgium's 1554. Wow, it's good.

Red Lobster

2010-03-28T20:27:00.002-06:00

My wife and I both detest seafood. I mean, look in Leviticus; it seems that most of it is detestable to God too. Well, her parents came to visit and generously offered to take us to lunch today. The options were Olive Garden or Red Lobster. We both adore Olive Garden, but we both know that Red Lobster has options for people such as we. The geniuses there know that they select out a portion of their clientele if they don't provide decent food for those with good taste.

We selected the Cajun Chicken Linguine Alfredo and Baked Potato Soup. The soup was incredible. We ordered the full portion of the former, which comes with almost a pound of pasta. I was a bit hungry, but I didn't realize they had those awesome cheesy biscuits. So I ate a bunch of the biscuits, and we had a quite a bit of the pasta left over. The cajun spice was just the right amount of spicy (I do like spicy). Here's the thing: There was almost as much chicken as there was pasta. We all marveled at the exceedingly generous portion of chicken. It was a wonderful meal.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but if we had money to eat out, I would actually go back to Red Lobster. But only for the meal we had; not for the stuff they specialize in.

Moderation

2010-03-27T13:58:00.003-06:00

Our favorite breakfast on the weekends is to fetch drinks from Starbucks and donuts from the grocery store. This morning was one of the times that this worked out. As we were perusing the donut selection, a mom and her four-year-old son stepped up to select their donuts.

The boy asked, "Are these good for us to eat?"

Mom replied, "In moderation, they're okay."

"Are the chocolate ones moderation?"

The End

2010-03-26T14:41:00.003-06:00

I'm having an immensely productive afternoon (for a Friday, no less!) listening to Eef Barzelay, formerly of Clem Snide. My friend Paul will tell you that both artists/groups are incredibly depressing, and that you should have at least three means of slitting your wrists handy so that after you bleed out, you can continue the process. The music is that depressing. (I'm sorry; I do know how serious both depression and suicide are, and I don't intend to make light of them. Rhetorical point.)

Oddly, if I'm really in a funk, I put this most depressing of music on, and I am energized in a way that almost nothing else provides.

In Barzelay's "Songs for Batya" he says, "Death is just the moment when the dying ends." In a real sense, this is true. The inexorable process of decay (whether of the telomeres or other systems) meets a point when there is no longer sensation of decay. Then the corpse really begins to decay.

Theologically, however, I believe the dying continues. Death, as in the moment, isn't a digital 1 or 0. After the Fall, death = 1. It's always on. It suffuses the creation, and even for the disembodied spirit resting, waiting in the presence of God, death is a very present reality. The spirit has no body for [not] God's sake!

But if there is any hope whatsoever, it is looking forward to the time when death = 0. The zero point is the resurrection. When all things become new, death is off. It can no longer impact God's good, new creation. We do see that for Jesus, death = 0, and through the Spirit, we can begin to experience a sort of brownout of death. But it's obviously still present, arcing across the circuit gate so 1 > death > 0. But for the fullness of creation to be present, death must die completely.

A better line, and perhaps one to poke into your consciousness as Holy Week approaches, is "Resurrection is the moment when the dying ends!" Thanks be to God.

Prophetic

2010-03-10T15:34:00.004-07:00

I had a conversation with a co-worker today about the cultural situations into which prophecy is spoken. I often think of it being shouted to evil, arrogant folk who must repent or be destroyed. While that certainly happened from time to time in the First Testament, there is an equal opposite. Isaiah says,
Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her

that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,

that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins. (TNIV)

That set me to thinking about physics. Or, more specifically, the fact that I've seen a picture of a sine wave before.

What if, simplistically, the red line above the middle dotted line shows the portions of culture that are arrogant and judgmental? And the red line below shows those who feel guilty all the time and show it on the outside? Maybe these are the ones Jesus called poor in spirit.

What if the prophet is always calling people to that dotted line? I would call people around this axis self-reflective, humble, and pliable. I like to think of myself as those three things, so maybe I'm poisoning the well by creating this mythical culture in my own projected image. But bear with me.

We see in Israel's history the times when they were pretty self-confident, and God needed to bring them down a notch. Then they were way too down on themselves, and he had to say what I quoted above. But if they hadn't gotten too arrogant, they wouldn't have needed to be brought down to begin with.

A healthy self-concept where God is God, and we are his servants/stewards/image, is a good place to start. The role of prophet in a culture that lives this way would end up being more priestly; indeed, the writer to the Hebrews says Jesus's followers are a kingdom of priests. But in the meantime, prophets will always be necessary to help people tread the middle line of balance.

While I like to see myself treading this middle axis, the truth is every person and community balances around an infinite number of axes. We are not capable of keeping track of all the axes. Therefore, we humans are more susceptible to modeling ourselves after heros (or anti-heros) in stories. We can look to how YHWH and Jesus and the prophets behaved in their movements of the big story, and perhaps that will help us to learn to truly live.

Thanks to Omegatron and Wikipedia for the sine wave.

Weltschmerz

2010-02-21T12:22:00.002-07:00

I discovered a great word the other day that seemed to sum up my worldview. Of late, I've felt more and more saddened by what I see going on in the world (Iraq, Washington, Haiti, Tiger Woods—doesn't matter). I pray for peace, shalom-style. But I still feel sad.

That's when I discovered Weltschmerz: "Sadness over the evils of the world . . . " (American Heritage Dictionary). I told my co-workers about it, and we all resonated with it.

Later I wasn't near my AHD (online), so I looked the word up in the dictionary.com app on my iPod. I was shocked by the different definition. "Sorrow that one feels and accepts as one's necessary portion in life; sentimental pessimism." Next chance I got, I looked again at the AHD definition. It continued, "especially as an expression of romantic pessimism." So there is a similarity between the two definitions, but I was able to allocate the first half of AHD's to something I resonated with.

Weltschmerz is a German word meaning "world pain." In my mind, it's too bad it took on such Eeyoreism. A Christian worldview sees the pain in the world and feels genuine sadness. But there's always hope in the present, based on God's faithfulness in the past, looking expectantly toward the future redemption, resurrection, and restoration. According to the dictionary, Weltschmerz places its hope squarely in the past, if indeed there is any hope at all.

I propose a Christian Weltschmerz that motivates us to action as we work toward and wait for our final redemption.

Syncretism

2010-01-26T08:17:00.002-07:00

I have a difficult relationship with syncretism. I first heard the word regarding "those Catholics" in Latin America who mix the Catholic religion with animism. I also heard that it is a danger for Evangelical missionaries if they let the people they're reaching mix their old life in with their new life. I fear, though, that the "new life" is becoming like the missionary. (By the way, Emmanuel Kolini, outgoing archbishop of Rwanda, has just released a book called Rethinking Life which talks about how missionaries who performed a culture transplant on Africa—without anesthesia—killed it. He offers genuine appreciation for bringing the gospel, but he wishes it wasn't so corrupted by foreign culture.)

My next step in observing syncretism was in conservative, Evangelical culture. Syncretism is most insidious when you are the one living it. We each make decisions that we are comfortable enough with, and soon we're far from our roots. It's a slippery slope! (I hate how people use that sentence.) To me, "far from our roots" means that we have abandoned the foundational worldview that our faith was built on. We started becoming Greek/Gnostic in our thinking, and with the maturation of Modernism, we became the ultimate consumers. Those are the two key damnable features in Evangelical syncretism.

My latest observation of syncretism is Phil Jackson. His pop Zen Buddhism has been extremely effective for him and the Lakers. I refuse to denigrate his religious observation, and it'll be up to the Creator God of the Hebrews to judge him. But I did find his syncretism funny. Commenting on the "curse of the Clippers" brought by owner Donald Sterling, he said, "I'm of that generation that believed in karma. If you do a good mitzvah, maybe you can eliminate some of those things." Somehow his practice includes the Hebrew word for commandment. I'm sure he's not the only one to mix karma and mitzvah. But it shows how religious practice often picks up random tidbits from other cultures. And in the case of consumerism, I should clarify that religious practice is deeply held and undergirds how we live our lives, no matter what we say.

Security

2010-01-22T10:23:00.001-07:00

Next time you're at an airport, you'll get through the line easier if you tell the TSA folks you're wearing security breeches.

Or maybe not.

The New Reformation

2010-01-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

I walked by a dumpster this morning and cracked up at the Spanish for "trash only." Slightly modified, I think it could catch on as the watchword of a new reformation.

The only people who are allowed in the church are the ones that, relatively speaking, are about as good as trash. More to the point, they're the ones who know this to be true. No more condescending people looking down on you because you're not perfect. Because they're not either.

Also, violators should be fined.

Sola basura!

Yet another Haiti post

2010-01-14T22:19:00.003-07:00

I can't believe how bad it sucks. And that's an understatement beyond any before. Haiti has been pointed at as one of two (if I remember correctly) fourth world countries. Poverty is so awful as to be inhuman, and while infrastructure per se is not necessary to be human, Haiti's attempts at infrastructure seem to have worsened the poverty. Now with the devastation of the earthquake and aftershocks, it's impossibler to describe. (I have to make up words because I can't find expression?)

I don't have a great plea to make, but merely an observation on how this impacted me. I'm so far removed from what's happening, and I guess I don't have the ability to process it, that I can only turn inward and see what God may do in my heart.

This happened as I listened to All Things Considered on NPR. They interviewed a gentleman named Pierre Brisson. He very articulately set out what happened and the current situation. He admitted that his composure stemmed from the fact that he is still in shock from the devastation and from losing so many friends, and indeed the entire country is in shock.

I hadn't had a strong emotional reaction I think because of the enormity of the situation. Any emotions are inadequate to do justice to the grief that should be had. But the last comment from Mr. Brisson brought tears to my eyes because of the plea from one human: "Please ask everyone you know to pray for us. Pray for this country. We have suffered too much. Enough is enough now."

He started with the common plea, and yet the only thing most of us can do in these moments: pray. But his voice rose as he cried out against the injustice of it all. His last sentence calls to mind the evils of self-serving bureaucrats pillaging their nation, the resulting poverty, and the complete inability to deal with this disaster. The steely emotion in Mr. Brisson's voice as he was supposed to be saying, "And you have a nice day as well, Michelle," was fitting of an ancient psalmist crying out to YHWH, "How long will this go on? Do you even care?"

My heartfelt prayer is that the good Creator will bring his re-creating power to this people he dearly loves as an advance sign of the age to come and justice for people who have suffered for way too long. All our hands will accomplish this as our prayers and God's power work together for the glory of the Creator.

Agenda item

2010-01-14T20:22:00.003-07:00

As I walked by the checkout magazines (not the tabloids, but close), I laughed out loud. As a result of a difficult and truly admirable decision by the Palin family, the headline emerges: "We're Glad We Chose Life." Of course now they're even more the pro-life darlings. It's an amazing political move to use "choose life" on that public stage. I'm unquestionably pro-life and more so than most. (No killing old people, unborn babies, poor people in Africa, prisoners, terrorists, etc.) But I can't stand the unsubtle positioning statement. I would have liked the Palins if they would have said, "We like our new baby." It would be a self-conscious nod to a precious life and not a dehumanizing political statement at the expense of the poor child.

Leadership

2010-01-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

I think it is possible to take a ragtag bunch of lame people and build a thriving enterprise, be it a business or some other organization.

I only say this because of the example of Jesus. You may have the immediate GODman thought (rather than the more theologically appropriate manGod or Godman perspective). "Of course Jesus could take lame dudes and turn them into awesomeness. He was God." But that's just magical thinking. Do you notice how hard Jesus worked with his disciples to help them become like him? There certainly was no wandwaving. Jesus did the very human work of patient, forgiving, merciful leadership.

I'm afraid I don't have the courage today to lead the way Jesus did. May I have the humility to let God prepare me if that is his calling for me.

The Day-Age Theory of Christmas

2009-12-24T18:33:00.004-07:00

My wife and I were lamenting once again how Christmas is screwed up. The hobby stores like JoAnn, Michael's, and Hobby Lobby all put their Christmas stuff out for sale even before Halloween. And traditionally Christmas season doesn't even start till Christmas Day! There are supposed to be twelve days of celebration starting on December 25. Of course, there's no historical basis for this; it just goes back to the AD 300s. I guess I should say there's no biblical basis for it.

Then I realized.

Liberals have been taking over Christmas for the last generation or two. Just like how liberals are saying there aren't six literal days of creation. They're trying to undermine the historical faith. Now they want to take the historical Christmas and turn it into some liberal, tree hugging (literally as they try to wrestle that giant pine onto their SUV the day after Thanksgiving!) unholyday. They're taking the twelve days and turning them into two whole months! I'm calling this perversion the Day-Age Theory of Christmas. They sing about the Twelve Days of Christmas, but in their hearts and lives they make each day of Christmas into like five days or an age.

As for me and my house, we're sticking with the twelve literal days of Christmas.

The Moral Muslim

2009-12-20T03:44:00.003-07:00

I'm reading "The Missional Leader" by Roxburgh and Romanuk for a class. I hated the book as I saw it leering at me from the top of the To Read stack. But quickly upon opening it I realized these guys are doing good stuff. They put their fingers on the general malaise in the church, and they point a human, non-guaranteed-success way forward. The content is applicable to other areas, but it is presented to deal with church leadership.

One idea they mentioned in passing finally unlocked something I've been working on for a long time.

The American church has long been about being moral. There's decent reason for that. Leading a moral life at its basic level can lead to health. But we've heaped layers of bad stuff on morality. Control. Superiority. Judgmentalism. Easy methods of being judgmental.

Morality has long been our "good news." When we present the gospel, what is the first reaction? "Well, I could never be that good," or "I still wanna have some fun." We always insist that being a Christian isn't about being good, but this visceral critique from outsiders is actually spot on.

The American Christian game: Be moral. We're better than you.

Now judgment is coming upon us. Christians are having an identity crisis (if they let themselves think at all) because they look at moral Muslims. They're beating us at our own game! We're still within the infancy of this realization. There are several possible responses. We can redouble our moral efforts to win the old game. We could change teams and become Muslims because they have more discipline and they're going to win the championship. We could go pluralist and ask who set up this stupid league in the first place. We could go play fantasy moralism and take the best aspects of each team to try win in our own made up league. (While parts of this are appealing, it only compounds the problem.)

Or we could become Christians. The gospel is something more like God's Spirit coming to live among us, recreating us. Jesus, the creative speech act of God, breathed on his disciples, the mud of society, as the Creator breathed on Adam, the dust of the earth. Jesus constituted a new humanity here. (Thanks to Missional Leader for some of this.) And he didn't say, "Go out into the world and be moral." That would be on par with saying, "Go be that old rotting carcass that you all hate." He told them to announce the good news that the Spirit is now among us, animating this new creation.

If Christians want to be distinctive, the tellers of the real metanarrative, they're going to have to go this direction. For the time has finally come that the world is becoming aware that there is a new superstar in the moral league (though with many of the same failings as the church). We have a unique story. We have to tell it.

Meditation

2009-12-16T21:27:00.002-07:00

Read the following as a Scriptural meditation. Post a comment if you see anything awry.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our souls. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Shut-ins eighty years from now

2009-12-15T17:38:00.002-07:00

Given the popularity of certain children's footwear today, I wonder if eighty years from now they'll have to change Meals on Wheels to Wheeling Mealies.

Diapers

2009-12-15T16:24:00.004-07:00

I realized a couple of weeks ago that changing diapers is a sacrament, or it's at least sacramental. In the Middle Ages there were big discussions about what constituted a sacrament, and some listed up to thirty-five sacraments. I'm not sure if changing diapers was one of them.

There's something about taking part in something so mundane and repetitive that makes me think of the major Protestant sacraments involving bread and wine and water. We all take food and water regularly to survive. As a natural consequence, we also poop. Praise the Lord for potty-training, but short of that, something needs to be done to help our baby survive. On a long enough timeline, an unchanged diaper is dangerous, just like lack of food and water.

If water is sacramental symbolizing our need for spiritual cleansing, and if bread and wine is symbolic pointing to our need for spiritual nourishment from God, I think changing a diaper symbolizes interminably repetitive service in the midst of the crap of life. These physical acts are necessary to physical survival, but they also mediate a spiritual realization of our utter dependence on God and one another.

Perhaps as I continue in the faithfulness of diaper changing, my bold assertion about how we should serve others will truly sink in.

Holy smokes, JK!

2009-12-14T18:59:00.005-07:00

As I was looking up a word in the dictionary, a strangely familiar word beckoned me. I didn't have much mental context for it, so of course I had to click on it. The word was "witenagemot." It's a ruling council with which an Anglo-Saxon king would consult.

In the Harry Potter series, this was easily morphed into Wizengamot, the ruling council of wizards and witches. More proof that JK Rowling is a philologist par excellence.

Hilariously, I was looking up the word "witch doctor" when I stumbled across that gem.

350

2009-12-13T20:19:00.003-07:00

I happened upon Speaking of Faith as I was running errands this evening. Every time I've heard the show (on NPR) I've been intrigued. Krista Tippett was interviewing Bill McKibben about climate change. His personal journey led him to somewhat accidentally become an activist in this field.

I've been on the somewhat concerned side about climate change for a while. Some of those close to me have said, "Oh it's just a natural cycle." Others have said the now infamous, "It's all going to burn anyway." May God grant that this self-fulfilling prophecy doesn't come true.

My position has been, yes, climate always changes on a long enough scale. But humans have never caused an ice age. My major concern is whether we're causing the climate to change. If we are, we must stop! If it's other "natural" causes, so be it.

Bill McKibben gave the clearest perspective I've heard on the matter. He's not an alarmist, but he's sounding a very loud alarm. For millennia the count of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been 275 ppm +/- 10. This started to climb shortly after the industrial revolution when coal became the fuel du jour. With coal, gas, and oil burning becoming ubiquitous, we have now reached about 390 ppm. A couple of years ago, scientists using pluriform models calculated that our Earth can sustain a maximum of 350 ppm. According to McKibben, we're in desperate shape.

However, all is not lost. He likens this to a visit to the doctor. A doctor might tell you, "You need to watch what you eat or you're going to have trouble down the road." That's where we were 50 years ago. Now the doctor is saying, "I'm surprised you haven't had a heart attack. Stop your bad habits now, or you're dead!"

McKibben is campaigning to get people to live more neighborly. That's what I love about his climate approach. He doesn't think we need more technology per se, though that will help. Fundamentally we must change our lifestyles or, for instance, hundreds of millions of people will die from dengue fever. With a small increase in temperature, the dengue bearing mosquito is becoming far more prevalent. And it's an all-day mosquito, so netting won't help. Four percent of the world's population accounts for 25 percent of the carbon emissions. And that says America isn't being very neighborly if we're helping to inflict debilitating diseases on folks in Bangladesh who ride their bikes everywhere.

This has already gone long and there are several other fascinating ideas to share. Listen to Bill McKibben on Speaking of Faith or at Q, and he mentions how we've flipped the script in Job. That was the thing I set out to write about! But he tells it well. McKibben's website is www.350.org.

Unwelcome

2009-12-13T19:59:00.003-07:00

I heard some talk yesterday about where the government may send detainees from Guantanamo Bay in an effort to close the detention facility as soon as possible. In homage to thisisindexed.com, I've done my own index size card, but without the authentic lines and scrawling.

Excuses

2009-12-11T16:06:00.002-07:00

Ever avoiding blame, I have to say my lack of posting centers on work. I've been working a lot lately. Oh, and my classes have kept me hopping. Oh, and Evadel was born three weeks ago. Then I ask myself, why am I looking for something to blame about not posting to my blog? No excuses necessary, I suppose. I am taking time off from work to enjoy wife and daughter, so perhaps I'll return with more regularity.

Publishing

2009-12-11T15:26:00.003-07:00

A friend sent me this blog post titled The End of Book Publishing As We Know It and asked my thoughts about it.

My stream of consciousness back to him:

This is an interesting post. I think I generally agree with him. The best we can say about this sort of seachange is "I dunno." But I have noticed that I'm not very motivated to read a book on the Kindle, even though it's quite impressive. I'm still a book guy for the moment. But if the ebook format improves, I might convert.

I was waiting for his thoughts on the people who will still deal in paper books. I love his analogy with candles. There is something romantic about a paper book relative to an ebook. [insert rant about gnosticism and electric things like lights and ebooks here]

The salvation for publishers at the moment is that we can publish electronically for free (without doing all the added value he's talking about—yet). We can lower print runs to not get hosed with inventories while we wait for the economy to recover. And for the type of books where we know the key audience wants a print book, we can do smaller print runs print on demand at a somewhat higher cost, but still make margin because those mavens will pay for the slightly more expensive book.

It's funny to look at this in historical perspective. I know that the manager/publisher/abbot of the local scriptorium was pissed when the printing press started cutting into their workloads. Every merchant who has ever dealt in the technology that's becoming obsolete has cried that it's unfair (or at least been tempted to). The papyrus guys were a bit bent out of shape when vellum became practical. Then we discovered wood pulp paper and put those guys out of business. The merchants/publishers who thrive will be the ones who say, "Let's try our hand at the new thing." It's either that or go ahead and waste away into oblivion. If we try and still fail, that's okay because we were going to fail anyway. And it's better to have a good attitude about it, saying change is inevitable, and more rapid in this modern world. However as you teach, history is not inevitable, and we get a chance to help write it with innovative ideas of our own. We're not merely at the mercy of "those change forces" like technology.

Not of this World

2009-10-27T08:15:00.003-06:00

On the way to the office this morning, we saw a Hummer H2 with a NotW sticker. I started cracking up, and my wife said it well: "I'm not of this world, so I can waste all it's resources!" This was, after all, a city Hummer.

A bit later, she said, "Darn those illegal immigrants! They won't assimilate into our culture, and they're using all our resources!"

Then, piling on, she said, "They won't even learn our language! They just speak this weird something . . ."

My wife, the comedienne. The more I try to parse it, the more ironic it gets. They are of this world in investing massive amounts of resources in their home. Oh, I mean their car! (I recognize the sliding scale here.) But driving the H2 with that sticker really says their theology is escapist. We're called to steward this creation well without buying into the corrupt thought systems.

Patriotism

2009-10-19T22:05:00.003-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, Susan and I were driving through a new construction zone, and we saw a delightful sign. It was delightful because we were pretty sure there was a mistake, but we weren't sure. It said, "Stores open during construction," and the second screen said, "Thank you for your patriotism." We tried laughing, but we were too incredulous to do so wholeheartedly. What if they actually meant that?

Tonight we drove by, and thankfully our suspicions were confirmed. The second screen read "Thank you for your patronage."

Gales of laughter.

Kelly

2009-10-14T09:21:00.002-06:00

I'm sitting at the oil change place getting ready to try to get some work done. (How's that for three degrees' separation from reality? I swear I'll accomplish a lot.)

I have to make the quick note that Kelly Ripa looks extremely bored. She looks utterly disengaged, but on cue, she knows when Regis will ask a question, and she deadpans a sarcastic answer. I know that's part of her schtick, but I've never seen somebody so disengaged in a "conversation."

Leadership and service

2009-10-07T20:07:00.003-06:00

Oddly enough, as I was washing the skillet in which I prepared scrambled eggs for our egg and cheese tortillas, I started thinking about leadership vis-à-vis crap jobs. I've also had amorphous ideas brewing for a while about gifting and the utilization thereof.

Then it hit me. In figuring out responsibility within a group, a leader should first see if there is anyone who is gifted at or likes doing a certain thing, say, cleaning toilets. If not, then that is for that group a "crap job" (pun not necessarily intended). At that point, it is the leader's responsibility to do that job.

It's important to weigh gifting before "servant shepherd" leadership. Only when it is clear that there is a dearth of gifting does the leader do the right thing and be the servant in that particular task. It should also be clear that there's no BSing (pun also not really intended) when people are claiming gifts. The leader should not allow any individual to curry favor by taking the crap job. Then gifting and service are both allowed to flourish.

This is idealistic for sure, and there may be situations where it is utterly impractical and totally counterproductive. But I think there's some merit here, and I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Annie Waits

2009-09-25T15:27:00.002-06:00

The repeat song of the day has been "Annie Waits" by Ben Folds. Further, Ben Folds has been the repeat artist the last couple of days, since his driving piano and strong vocals have driven me to get a lot of work done. A nice thing these days.

I just turned off the repeat, but only after forty listens. Yikes! It's good.

Refectory

2009-09-17T10:44:00.000-06:00

I have to wonder about pretension. Or pretending.

The other day, I was on the intranet for Fuller Seminary, and I saw their refectory was closed or had limited hours for the summer. This begged the question in my head: "What the heck is a refectory?" I had an idea, but I had to check. And sure enough, it did have to do with food. Well, I'll be. I'm a pretty big fan of foody stuff.

Why did my seminary use such a pretentious word for "cafeteria"?

Because they aren't pretending.

My widget tells me that a refectory is a place for communal meals, especially in a religious or educational institution. Fuller's good on four counts. There's food. They're religious. They provide education. And they like to emphasize community.

I'm not normally against big words, but for some reason I thought this pretense was a bit out of line. It's a friggin' cafeteria. But actually it's not. A cafeteria denotes a place where feedlot cattle would eat if they were bipeds and carried trays. A refectory is a place where students or monastics intentionally—self-consciously, in a good way—come together to share a meal in a reflective atmosphere.

Not having been on the main campus of Fuller since I was four, I'm happy to know that they are at least trying to cultivate the discipline of reflective communal supping, even if it may be in name only.

Demonym

2009-09-02T20:14:00.002-06:00

When I showed my wife the hilarity of my friend's post, we started talking about Niger, the country where they live. What is a person from Niger called? I had an idea, but I didn't want to make anything up, so I checked Wikipedia. Our friends there introduced me to one of my new favorite words: demonym. Literally, it means "name of the people." It seems a fairly recent neologism, and it's brilliant. By the way, they're "Nigeriens," pronounced with a Freedom accent.

An awful joke

2009-08-29T23:29:00.002-06:00

A kid walks into the kitchen just as his mom finishes carving the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. When he sees the guts, he exclaims, "That's offal!"

Black Card

2009-08-29T19:47:00.004-06:00

I saw a banner ad for Visa's Black Card. It talks about how exclusive it is and how great it will be for me.

There are three key selling features I see. One is the 24-hour concierge service. It says they will be there to help me with all my travel, leisure, and personal needs. Like my need for a psychiatrist, right? Concomitant with that is access to airport lounges (said access is not defined) and "luxury gifts." Oh, and the 1% cash back on purchases or ability to convert to points. Forgot that unique feature.

Another key feature is the material the black card is made from. It's not plastic. It's made with (not of) carbon, which is "guaranteed to get you noticed." By checkout employees and waitstaff? "Oh look! A credit card!"

The really key selling feature is how exclusive it is to be a Black Card holder. It is limited to 1% of U.S. residents. Where do I call? Now? I certainly want to be part of an exclusive club of 3.3 million people!

The most attractive part of the whole package is that it only costs $495 per year!

I see this appealing to a certain demographic. There will be a small class who finds it useful for the travel benefits, but I'm certain most of these cards will go to people who don't think they're unique enough. The allure of being exclusive and getting noticed is worth $495 a year.

Inclusive of friendliness

2009-08-23T21:08:00.003-06:00

Upon the generous bestowal of a gift card (Thanks, Emmie!), Susan and I went to Olive Garden for dinner tonight. Oh, so yummy. In our usual (if infrequent) order, there is nothing I don't enjoy fully. The salad, breadsticks, steak gorgonzola or chicken alfredo pizza, and dessert are absolutely wonderful. But there is one thing that tops everything: zuppa toscana. It is a perfectly spiced white soup of potatoes, sausage, and greens.

Which brings me to my point. The waiter came to check if we needed anything and asked me, having just finished a bowl of soup, "Do we need another bowl of soup?" Susan noted after Ben had left, "No, we don't, but you do." I told her he was using the inclusive of friendliness.

In my Greek classes over the years I have enjoyed a number of specialty grammar designations such as this. In technical terms, I might document the usage this way: Subject uses first person plural inclusive pronoun metonymously for second person singular or plural exclusive (relative to the speaker) pronoun. The speaker used a grammatical construction that includes himself in order to ingratiate himself in an exclusive environment. An inclusive of friendliness.

What kind of practices?

2009-08-19T17:50:00.002-06:00

I often hear people talking about how critical it is to follow "best business practices." It's been under my skin for a while, but I really started thinking how awful the concept is last night.

I'm not sure if users of this phrase realize what happened with best business practices last year. They have nearly killed us. As long as profits continued to rise, people thought the companies must be doing something right. Remember that one time when Enron was so awesome? They may not have been using certifiable best accounting practices, but their auditors were still letting them pass. In general, they looked like an awesome company doing everything right.

That's another misuse of the phrase. I hear it used for anything related to how work gets done, from business processes to accounting to how long I take in the bathroom. Just kidding on that last one.

Another fallacy is that there is a monolithic "best" to be practiced. Who determines what is best? Is it what the business community seems to be doing at the time? Mmm, design by committee. Is there a best practices board? Who appointed them?

And for my angriest critique. Best business practices are stultifying, and they breed laziness. These are two sides of the same coin, but they each bear highlighting. This idea ensures there is no creativity. You don't sit around the table saying, "What's a creative solution?" You say, "What's everybody else who's smarter and better than me doing?" Users may not start this way, but this process ends in laziness. "Just tell me what to change." If you spend all your time fixated on best practices, you'll soon be left in the dust trying to catch up to what may or may not be best. Should these be called "fine enough for lazy follower practices"?

There's a cultural/linguistic thing going here. We've seen how "progress" joined the pantheon of American/Western ideals. Always gotta grow. More profits this year. Cut your expenses, unless you add profits and then some. More SKUs. More brochures. As was proven in this last year, unless you choose a sustainable growth path of a few percent per year in an established field, your company will be hurting badly at the next down cycle. So we're always looking to grow faster than we should. We're looking for the *best* way to do things. Whatever happened to "good business practices"? What's wrong with good? The comparative and superlative denigrate the old lowly "good," which could really mean "honest" or "sustainable."

God declared his creation "good," even "very good." He didn't call it "best," because he wanted his creatures to industriously and creatively steward his creation in a way that would glorify him.

Deity pronouns

2009-08-19T12:09:00.004-06:00

Another odd obsession of mine is whether or not to capitalize pronouns referring to deity. I fall pretty firmly on the side of not doing so. The general reason is that historically no one has capitalized these pronouns, so why start now. In fact the early manuscripts of the New Testament had all capital letters with no spaces. How on earth will I know when Jesus does stuff?!

A second angle is similar to my dislike for red letter editions. These practices privilege words that were never meant to be privileged.

My latest reason came the other day as I was reading some unedited copy with pronouns referring to Jesus capitalized. I was struck with the strong sense that the capitalized pronouns were used almost as a name so that the antecedents didn't really need to be defined. If this is the case, then that simply points out authorial laziness.

We should never use specific words as an out so we can avoid good writing. (See "stuff" above.)

Devotional promiscuity

2009-08-18T17:18:00.002-06:00

In my years of obsession against versejacking, I've often heard and thought that the way we often do "devotions" can be pretty damaging. Freewheeling devotional thoughts on a verse or less does not constitute knowing the Bible or even getting to know it.

I had a conversation today where we were talking about jumping around from verse to verse in different books in the Bible. The positive aspect of Bible engagement is getting to know a story, loving it, and living it well (akin to Peterson's Eat This Book). We form a relationship with the story. However, if we skip blindly about, we commit the worst sort of relational damage. And perhaps that activity is best called "devotional promiscuity."

Formation of self

2009-08-13T19:40:00.002-06:00

I'm reading an essay in a book entitled "Multiculturalism" by Charles Taylor. He leans heavily on Rousseau to discern what is culture and what is self and where they meet.

Rousseau said that unhealthy "other-dependence" (e.g., clinginess) actually serves to isolate a person. A healthy form of this, which he doesn't refer to as other-dependence, binds one with those around them in a common purpose. Paradoxically, the latter case is where one finds oneself.

My wife filled me in on this paradox in parenting theory, that if a child is left to themselves to develop a sense of self, they will constantly hang around with adults rather than other children. They aren't able to enculturate themselves with other kids, and presumably this is damaging as an adult. On the other hand, if their parent attaches emotionally with the child, they won't grow up to be clingy (unless it's overdone). They will enculturate to parent/family, other children, then the broader world.

Anthropologically, and perhaps deeper, theologically, humans are to find their self and their identity in community. If I were raised by wolves (as some no doubt think is the case), I would be seen as less than human by those who discovered me. I wouldn't be able to talk or interact as normal humans do. But after interacting for a suitable time, I would become more human.

How do I discover my giftings and passions? Only by exposing myself to people (not like that) and activities. For instance, I could have the potential to be a great carpenter. But if I'm not exposed to chisels, routers, planers, and wood, I'll never know if I could work with wood or enjoy it. The same is true of more intangible interactions. Am I a people person? An introvert? Who knows unless I interact with others? I don't like the idea of telling a kid they can be anything they want when they grow up. But I do like the idea of exposing them to all sorts of wonderful ideas and activities. Then they get to discern their gifts and calling based on their knowledge and experience.

Some philosophers say we shouldn't refer to ourselves as "human beings" but as "human becomings." We are most certainly defined by our interactions with our communities. If I had never met Susan, I would be a radically different person, and probably a sniveling, desperate one. But if I believe myself to be a human "being" in a core sense, I have a boring existence ahead of me. It is through interaction with a community that I learn who I am becoming and what our community is becoming.

So theologically, it is through this communal becoming that I discover my truest, most human self.

Offensive Jesus

2009-08-10T13:13:00.003-06:00

I saw one of those wonderful (for various reasons) illustrations of Jesus helping out in a sporting event at Burnside Writers' Blog.

My first comment queried whether the poor defender hadn't prayed hard enough, as the boy on offense was obviously on the cusp of an incredible play. But then I thought, in this whole genre of photography (I've revised the medium), I've never seen Jesus helping a defender. I'm very curious why this is.

I know there are theological underpinnings to this. I propose it is because we see Jesus as one who helps us accomplish positive acts. We typically celebrate defensive failures by watching replays of monster home runs, thunderous dunks, and impossible touchdown catches. We fantasize ourselves in terms of great accomplishments like these, especially spiritual slam dunks that only Jesus could accomplish through us. (*retching*)

But we view defense as the thwarters. If they're going to get any help, it's coming from a dude with a pointy tail. Nobody wants a thwarting Jesus.

Things you think before pregnancy

2009-08-05T13:45:00.001-06:00

Pre-conception preconceptions

Confident. Shul.

2009-07-31T14:24:00.003-06:00

And by "shul" I don't mean synagogue.

It cracks me up how people who feel a bit important put an obstreperous confidentiality notice in their e-mail signature. Either they think people read bottom to top, or they blindly assume the cocky paragraph protects them.

Personally, I try to grace people with a creative e-mail. If it is misdirected, I want the recipient to enjoy the communique from erroneous punk. If feeling sassy, I put this in my signature line:

COMPETENCY NOTICE: This electronic communication is intended soulfully for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed and may contain information which to read would be your privilege, which is competent and which may be exempt from disposal due to insipidity under applicable law. If you have received this communication in error, please feel free to delectate others and distribute the original message. Please gratify the sender by e-mail at the address shown. Thank you for your competence.

Vanity foul

2009-07-30T23:32:00.003-06:00

I was reading along in my favorite theologian/historian/philologist/bishop/awesome dude, and his juxtaposition of "vanity" and "futility" was enlightening.

I'm used to hearing an Old English rendering of Ecclesiastes: "Vanity! Vanity! Everything is vanity!" Falling on today's ears, that means self-absorption and my favorite line, "I thank God I am not like other men . . ." But the root of "vanity" is "vain." Now the previous lines definitely describe vain people. But there's also the meaning of "Your resistance will be in vain! Prepare to be assimilated!"

Recent commentators have preferred to translate "Vanity!" in Ecclesiastes as "vapor." Futility, vapor, vanity/doing things in vain; they all go nicely together. But how did "vanity" in the magazine rack come to mean not "Futility Fair"?

I propose it was moralism from certain concerned parents. In their pious judgment, being too interested in oneself, one's social standing, and one's appearance was an exercise in futility. They taught their children to not "chase after the wind" (more Ecclesiastes; I'm curious why I get the feeling in that work that the Teacher wasn't emphasizing self-absorption but merely activity). Later, people's vain (futile) actions became metonymous with their conceited attitudes. Now "vanity" is understood almost exclusively as pertaining to attitudes, but the root still deals with both actions and their not-necessarily-related attitudes. I don't have to be conceited to behave in a futile way. Stupidity and laziness do just fine.

Very

2009-07-30T09:20:00.002-06:00

A wise mentor always told me I should never use the word "very" if I wanted to write well. I didn't really believe him until I ran across two uses in different manuscripts. One said that something was "very critical." I'm not actually sure if you can get more critical than critical. The other was "very fundamental." It doesn't get more fundamental than fundamental.

I confess I still use "very" very liberally. Augh! I did it again! I'm becoming more aware of how the word cheapens other words. Particularly in American culture, we tend to superlativize like crazy. So once "critical" or "fundamental" isn't enough anymore, we add "very." A way to avoid overusing the word is to ask, "Does the word being described carry the meaning of 'very' in it already?" Then ask whether the word being described is strong enough. You may be able to substitute a word that's more colorful anyway, and your writing just got better.

Sin

2009-07-17T09:42:00.001-06:00

Posted as a comment on a friend's blog, but I thought it was a blog post in itself:

Yeah, I'm a sinner. My recent definition of sin is (although I think I shared it with your crew already) "grasping for control beyond the gifts, grace, and sphere of influence given one by God." We are never meant to be able to control how people feel (that nails me as a codependent) or if we've hired them to work for us because they're capable people, we shouldn't control how they work. Direction? Yes. Doing their job for them? Sin. Yes, micromanagement is a sin. It dehumanizes a person to tell them you trust them to create cultural goods, whether hamburgers or products or processes, but then to override their gifts and creativity. Control is at the heart of all that's called sin. Idolatry is saying, "I'll trust you to bring me what I need, but I'll tell you what to bring me." No trust. Only control.

This makes me call most of the "saints" around me sinners, recognizing that we have a whole lot in common.

Mmmmmarketing!

2009-07-10T20:03:00.002-06:00

My wife and I took a comfort food break at McDonald's, and I'm amazed at the thinly veiled, yet clever marketing.

The fries told me that I love them so much because McDonald's uses the highest quality potatoes. I suppose this means there's a secret potato farm that other restaurants only dream of locating. Could it be what they fry those excellent potatoes in?

The cup tells me that there's a natural correlation between my enjoyment of the fries and my desire for a cold soft drink. The Colonel's been accused of putting an addictive chemical in his chicken, but could it be that McDonald is doing this with the fries? *Once they taste the fries, they'll be compelled to pay way too much for a drink . . . *

The burger wrapper said the made the burger just for me. I did order it plain, but at no point in the process did anyone think of me.

All of this drivel is meant to make me feel good—and they make millions off of millions of people—but they must be praying I don't think while I enjoy their addictively excellent potatoes.

Consumption, sustainability, and dehumanization

2009-06-28T19:35:00.004-06:00

I just read this article on "how Facebook is better for the environment than solar panels." http://www.good.is/post/conspicuous-but-not-consuming/

They make a very interesting point, that the old gold standard for status—consumption—is being replaced by online expressions. One particular example is how you can display your social capital on Facebook by having a certain set of friends. (Read: Can I get the people popular in the group of people I want to be popular with to be my Facebook friend?)

All this may be good news for the environment in some ways, especially as people in developing countries posture for status in a way that will subvert the wasteful posturing of their dictators. However, there has to be a human balance to this. I hold that sites such as Facebook should reinforce existing embodied relationships and help create new ones. However, if we merely sublimate consumption and wasting of resources into a dehumanizing commodification of names, I'm not sure we've gained much.

Spirit?

2009-06-27T20:23:00.002-06:00

It's not uncommon to be reminded in books, articles, or sermons that the Hebrew ruach and the Greek pneuma share the semantic domains spirit, wind, and breath. It's funny to me that in English we have three different words to communicate something that only needed one in our "sacred" languages. (By that I mean the languages that bring us our sacred writings.)

I think the relative explosion of words in English to translate the single word from Hebrew or Greek hurts our understanding. The fact that translators try to parse whether the word means breath here and spirit there hurts our ability to see resonances that would have been obvious to the original readers.

Take for instance the idea that the Holy Spirit dwells in us. What if we looked back to Genesis and saw that God's creative act that made humans human was his breathing into our nostrils? How about translating Paul this way: "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the holy breath, who is in you, whom you have received from God?" With that, you see that this Holy Spirit is what actually rehumanizes us. Naturally, there's the question of the pronouns that follow. I left them as "who," but in Greek they're neuter, as is pneuma. The translators moved from a pronoun that might more appropriately be translated "which" to "who" in order to personalize the holy pneuma. No doubt the Spirit is a person, but if you translate it as God's holy breath, it sounds awkward in English to say "who."

Think also of Jesus at the end of the gospel according to John. "With that he breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.' " This is Jesus taking seriously his role in the creation process from the beginning of the gospel. Perhaps if he did this in America today, he would say, "Breathe the breath of God, which makes you truly human." He continues by saying that those he just breathed on are capable of dispensing forgiveness. The Pharisees questioned Jesus for doing that, but in a sense it is a capacity that resides in humans, especially because Jesus re-created those he breathed on.

Regardless, it's helpful to remember that wherever the Holy Spirit is referenced, it should remind us that humans were always intended to breathe God's breath. Perhaps it's the Holy Spirit that/who sets us apart from more apish living as in Francis Collin's fascinating anthropology expounded in his book, The Language of God.

Bridging the gap between homosexuals and people who wish homosexuals weren't

2009-06-24T17:07:00.003-06:00

My post today is part of a larger initiative of more than 50 bloggers all sharing their thoughts on how to "bridge the gap." You can check out the other links at: www.btgproject.blogspot.com.

The first thought I have about the relationship/dialogue/interaction between the homosexual community and the part of the religious community that's outspoken against the homosexual lifestyle, is that those who denigrate homosexuality need to make sure they "have their house in order" before they lambaste others. Which is to say, there will be no lambs basted.

In our cultural moment, one word which is impossible to use without instant alienation is "sin." Yet that's the first question asked: "Is homosexuality sin?" When I hear this question, it reminds me of my thoughts when asked for money on the streets of Chicago. "We have a one-minute-old relationship, and forty-three seconds of that were spent talking about money. What makes me think I should trust you?" In the same way, when someone I don't know asks me my opinion about homosexuality, I have to let them know that we don't have a level of trust built to adequately deal with all sides of the issue.

If homosexuality is a sin, and if I have a propensity to condemn sinners to hell or whatever, I also need to remember my primary sins: desire for control and gossip, both as damnable as homosexuality if it is indeed damnable. I desire for people to gently prod me when I'm grasping for control beyond what God has granted me, but I want it to be people who love me. Otherwise, I'll be suspicious that they're simply trying to wrest my control away from me. If religious non-homosexuals want to have a positive relationship with homosexuals, it must be predicated on love and trust, sans agenda. Usually when we begin genuinely relating to someone who is rather different from us, we start to see suspicion eroding. We no longer have the wherewithal to ostracize them, because they are human too. It's harder to hate someone with whom we find commonality.

With a church full of adultery, gossip, hatred, and lack of value for non-American human life, I don't see why we need to single out another group to judge. Let's start with our own house and then try to begin loving those who may not be in our house.

More Cash

2009-06-19T16:01:00.002-06:00

Sadly not the green stuff. I'm going through my Johnny Cash collection again. Believe it or not, I actually put the song "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" on repeat. I didn't realize it, but the other voice on the song is Bob Dylan. There's a YouTube video of the young men singing it. The edition on American IV is fabulously mournful and haunting.

I'm really not sure why I love depressing music. Somehow it makes me happy.

Streets of Laredo

2009-06-19T12:24:00.002-06:00

In an attempt to crank through mountains of work, I'm sitting at Starbucks listening to Johnny Cash. It's working!

I just listened to Streets of Laredo from his American IV album. The piano work in the last minute as the story talks about the funeral is absolutely stunning. It's very simple with a single note every few beats, but it's very powerful.

Millennial spell check

2009-06-11T12:48:00.001-06:00

I was studying the other night for an exam, and I noticed that in Microsoft Word, postmillennialism doesn't come up as misspelled. Premillennialism and amillennialism do. Agenda?

Order in the court!

2009-05-27T12:31:00.002-06:00

Wow, has it really been a month and a half? I can say I've had so much going on that blogging and Facebook have fallen off my radar. That's probably the correct order of priorities.

A quick note about the Supreme Court nominee. I would be proud to have a fellow diabetic on the high court. She's actually inspiring me to quit my job, go to law school, and become a judge. I think it would be awesome to be able to say, "The court is now in recess. The bench is having an insulin reaction."

A study in causality

2009-04-17T09:39:00.002-06:00

The new Jubilee

2009-03-29T18:30:00.002-06:00

I've been ruminating on this thought for a while. I think the whole bailout system we've got going is very intriguing.

Remember that one time when God told the Israelites to set up a deal where they didn't plant crops every seventh year? Where they set slaves free every fiftieth year? Where all debts were forgiven in the fiftieth year? This was intended to create an egalitarian society where the rich didn't keep getting richer and the poor didn't keep getting oppressed.

Now thankfully America is really progressive. We're now concerned about corporations that are about to go under. Those poor suffering groups of people who (are depersonalized with the corporation moniker and) spent years in wild speculation but are screwing the economy for everyone and especially the little guy who has no bailout.

In the Jewish model, people forgave people, and there was accountability (when/if jubilee was ever practiced). Now the people forgive pseudo-people through an intermediary that does a poor job of oversight. The problem is, few of the people in charge of corporations today were alive at the last major fall. The people running the spurious financial instruments were primarily young pups.

I understand the "too big to fail" concept. I do not want the economy to tank for years to come. But at the same time, I don't want the corporate memory to be as short as it has been. What if we all learned our lesson? One of the authors I work with, David Cowan, says, "If the bank isn't good enough to stay afloat, let the damn thing fail!" It's hilarious because he said this from the stage at a conservative Christian gathering.

From just about every angle, I think it's wrong to bail out irresponsible corporations. In that really long range way (because the public hasn't had to pay the national debt . . . yet), the middle class and up are financially responsible for the bailout. (Wait, are these loans to corporations "pay as you can"? I hope they all get paid back.) If we let them fail, I'm afraid the poorest people would be hurt the worst. In that sense, I think the bailout might be needed. But from a jubilee perspective, and from a sanity perspective, I'm not a fan.

More heritage

2009-03-29T17:59:00.003-06:00

Shortly after I posted on the question of heritage, I was reading NT Wright's "The Resurrection of the Son of God." His historical coverage of the idea of resurrection helped me immensely. Early in the Hebrew monarchy (and right before), people didn't have a strong idea of individual bodily resurrection. That came more in the Maccabean period and later. The primary idea of resurrection early on was a corporate or national focus. "If we go into exile, God will be faithful to resurrect us" was more the idea. Therefore, the idea of heritage was of paramount importance. Each individual (who definitely didn't conceive of themselves as such) wanted to participate in the age to come by having their seed present through their progeny.

As a product of individualism who is reforming my thinking around resurrection, I don't have a strong drive to bear offspring. I want to love and serve those who have present life around me in order to participate together as individuals in community in the age to come.

I'm actually pretty excited about the idea of having children, but as noted, I don't have a huge drive, given my hope for the future.

Sugar Ray

2009-03-22T21:28:00.004-06:00

I had hoped my next post after the dust settled in my life (from the sixteen-page history paper, the five-page Greek paper and final, the incessant work, etc.) would be a follow-up on heritage. That will be the next post after this one. But Sugar Ray is an easy post. Sorry if you had higher hopes for this blog.

Sugar Ray had three extremely popular songs back in the day: "Falls Apart," "Every Morning," and "Someday," all from their "14:59" album. All three had the same characteristic syrupy sweet sound. One could think that was just their sound. I'm listening to the rest of the album for the first time right now, and apart from those three tracks, I hear a metal track, an alternative track, a ska track, and at this moment a strange fusion of funk/hip hop/reggae. (A later edit: now I've heard a Jimmy Buffet/country track, a disco track, and a fun closing calliope track. Yikes. How do they do it?)

I think Sugar Ray was victimized by Top 40. The Top 40 stations snagged the three songs that would get them airplay (making Sugar Ray wealthy in the process), and left the rest of the songs to rot on the album. I feel bad for people who thought they were buying a Top 40 album and were disappointed by diversity. And believe it or not, I feel bad for the people who didn't buy the album, because they aren't Top 40 people.

I actually like some syrup occasionally. Now that I know that I can get some of that along with some impressive diversity all in one album, I might actually listen. 14:59 shows that Sugar Ray can play about any genre, and they can do it well. I think I'm about ten years late getting on this bandwagon, but oh well. I do hear they're going to be releasing an album this summer, if anyone is curious about that.

Wikipedia was my friend in explaining several things. "Fly" was a hit song from their second album, which I had forgotten. Their third album, 14:59, was titled in answer to critics that their fifteen minutes of fame wasn't quite up. Brilliant.

Heritage and seriousness

2009-03-03T08:54:00.002-07:00

As I was working on a project where I happened to skim through the book of Ruth, I caught the phrase "Naomi has a son!"

A flood of thoughts crashed through my mind. One is remembering what Ruth did to Boaz to get her way. (He enjoyed it.) Since when is uncovering Boaz's feet (or more to the point, outright seducing him, which is what she actually did) appropriate for God's holy people? Never mind that Ruth was a foreigner. I think the evangelical/fundamentalist church needs to reconsider its pharisaism. The Bible is not "safe for the whole family"! (That's a marketing claim of a local Christian radio station. Ugh.)

Anyway, that wasn't my point. I'm curious about the human drive for heritage. Naomi was pretty bent out of shape because she didn't have a son, and that's why when Ruth bore Obed, all the women celebrated for Naomi. It's perfectly appropriate in my mind to be bent out of shape about losing your husband and two sons, but there's a deeper drive that sought male heirs in ancient near eastern culture. To the Jewish people, if one didn't have a male heir, they were a persona non grata.

What is it that makes us take ourselves so seriously? One could talk about evolutionary drives or God-given instinct to procreate. But why does it become enshrined in social/moral/religious categories? I'm coming from my own cultural context that would be absolutely unthinkable to other cultures. But I find it fascinating that in order to be a person (at least in Naomi's day), one must have a son.

I myself would enjoy having children someday, but it's more because I want to provide a good example of humanity by shaping a wee one from their earliest days. I have absolutely no drive to pass on my genetics. Maybe that's because I'm a diabetic, and I don't want to burden someone else with that.

I guess my question in this is whether my perspective is totally skewed, or whether there's something I should learn from people in the Bible (or even today) who obsess over having their own offspring. (And don't get me wrong: I hurt for people who feel called to have children, but are unable.) Thoughts?

Fun assumptions

2009-03-01T22:59:00.003-07:00

Wow, it's been a while. I just ran across a fun quote in my Greek exercises.

[Therefore the Jews said to him,] "Now we know that you have a demon."

I'll be watching carefully for every opportunity to quote Scripture, let me tell you.

The Bible and slavery

2009-02-08T17:15:00.003-07:00

I took an American church history class last month, and I've had an idea percolating since then.

What if versejacking was the reason we had good Anglicans and Baptists and Methodists in the South saying that the Bible doesn't have a problem with slavery? They would grab a verse or two to show how slaves were a part of Jewish society in the First Testament, and they would use the verses from Paul to show that slaves are to submit to their masters. This wouldn't have been a monolithic perception. In the early 1800s, people would say that slavery was a necessary evil. By the mid-1800s, they were saying slavery was a positive moral good. American society had a covenant with God to be the best society. Whites were put at the top of the hierarchy to oversee a millennial kingdom of Christ. God in his sovereignty had ordained that Blacks were inferior to the Whites and therefore were slaves. All of this perception was wrapped up in Southern American civil religion. They were trying to maintain order (God-ordained order), while the Northern Progressives saw the millennial reign of Christ coming with the equality that the Declaration of Independence offered. Both sides used the Bible to prop up their cause. However, the Northerners saw in the scriptural metanarrative that all people are equal (okay, all men, not women). The Southerners saw order in a hierarchy brought about by versejacking.

Another interesting point is how religion was meted out to the slave populations. There was always a debate about how much religion slaves should be given. If they were taught to read the Bible, they would get uppity. If they were baptized or educated, the economy would lose the benefits of slaves, because they would start to demand equal rights. Southern slaveholders felt varying levels of compunction toward salvation for slaves. If they weren't human, they didn't need salvation. If they were inferior humans, they might need to get to heaven. They would be given enough religion to "save" them, but not enough to let them feel the egalitarian impulse in Paul: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (TNIV).

One thing the slaveholders never counted on was the fact that Judaism and the Christianity that sprang from it were primarily oral traditions. They kept the Bible and literacy from the slaves, but they didn't count on the narrative element of the faith energizing the slave populations. The slaves were able to tell the story of the exodus as their own story, looking toward heaven as the promised land. It doesn't seem like they held much hope for deliverance in this world. Ironically, the slaveowners held that they were the new Israel in the promised land subjugating the Canaanites and bringing about the reign of Christ. The slaves believed they were Israel waiting to be brought into the promised land and delivered from the tyranny of the Egyptians. America had two groups of people, both claiming to be the same group, one mature, one nascent. The slaves could look at the owners and say, "There's no way they're Israel." The owners didn't really think much about the slaves as long as they kept working, but even if they did. they probably didn't see the slaves grasping the narrative of Israel as their own.

It's very intriguing to me that this historical snapshot shows how different groups used the Bible so differently. And in the justice of history, the group that used the Bible badly had no concept that their slaves were gaining hope from the same Bible. Further, it appears to me that those with literacy and the written word emasculated the storied context of the Bible. The uneducated grasped the story. The story ended up winning (with help from some people who also seemed to grasp a larger story in the Bible, although they did their share of versejacking).

Mutiny

2009-02-07T18:12:00.002-07:00

Today, a roll of paper towels was my muse as I . . . mused.

I wonder if the biblical "deceitfulness of riches" might be better expressed as the "mutiny of the bounty."

Super Bowl commercials

2009-02-03T21:10:00.002-07:00

Here is my deliberately delayed list of faves. The way I see it, since most people are done talking about these sometime around Monday afternoon, I'm going to go against the flow by writing about them on Tuesday night. I appalled that I'm doing something in the interest of consumerism though. But they're funny!

There were two commercials that caught my attention enough for me to keep thinking about them. Oddly enough, they were separated by one other commercial. My favorite of the night was the Bridgestone commercial with dudes cruising (the moon?) and collecting rocks while jivin' to "Jump Around." At first I was infuriated that a tire company was the sponsor of the halftime show. What? Talk about a lame sponsor. (Here I go defending the consumptionplex again.) But they redeemed themselves with an extremely clever, well-executed commercial.

My second favorite was the monster.com feature of the moose in the boss's office. Then you pan around and see he didn't bother to just mount the head. The lackey gets to work straddled by the back legs of the moose. Nice!

I also chuckled at the Taco Bell commercial demonstrating all sorts of fastness when dude calls the girl who just gave him her number and has Taco Bell ready for her. At that moment his parents come to meet her. Clever.

On a sentimental side, I enjoyed the long "then-and-now" commercial. It was expansive and fun. Oddly enough, I don't remember what it was for. The main brands I remember were the VW bus and the Scion/Element vehicle of today.

I know there were others I enjoyed, but these were the ones that stuck in my memory, and that, after all, is what's important.

Evangelism

2009-01-25T19:48:00.002-07:00

I was conversing with some co-workers the other day, and one of them noted that the approach for evangelizing outsiders in the more fundamentalist sphere has been to "force them into the club." At which point I said without much forethought, "Or maybe club them into the force." As I reflect on that more, the more accurate it sounds.

Secrets in Washington?

2009-01-19T22:02:00.003-07:00

The news today was that Dr. Jill Biden, wife of very-soon-to-be VP Joe Biden, had let slip on Oprah that he may have been offered the choice of two different jobs: VP or Secretary of State. Of course, that's a slap in the face of Hilary Clinton. But Biden's team glossed over the remark that he had only ever been offered one job, even though he may have been qualified for more than one.

This made me think. We made it through the entire election cycle with that little secret knit up in a close circle. Not that it's a particularly relevant secret, or even that it's true, given the statements to the contrary. But given Joe Biden's purportedly sheepish look and initial attempts to shush his wife, it gives the comment veracity in my mind. On the other hand, there are a large number of "secrets" that regularly make it to the public. How many of them are relevant? How many are true? How many are controlled leaks? Given the number of journalistic remarks such as "on condition of anonymity," I have to think that there really is a team someplace that plants information in auspicious spots. If something comes from a spokesman, it has the ring of spun officiality. Coming from an unauthorized anonymous source gives it the ring of truth. Which takes spin to another level. What if the team tells an individual known to be in the know, "You tell this reporter this story OCOA"? Bingo. Public swallows it.

I'm gonna go crawl in my bunker now that the CIA's after me for spilling the secret. Unanonymously.

The Body of Christ

2009-01-16T14:59:00.003-07:00

Today my history prof noted that he grew up in a very diverse religious environment. His father was a Navy chaplain, and he went to services on base that included Catholics, Jews, and Protestants.

This reminded me of an idea that I read last summer in T.F. Torrance's The Mediation of Christ. He contends that the body of Christ is intended to be made up of Jews and Gentiles, all as God's chosen people. Torrance went further to show that the Jews are represented by the scapegoat that is cast out of the community on the Day of Atonement, and that the followers of Jesus are represented by the sin offering offered on that day (since Jesus was sacrificed). Torrance believes that the body of Christ is not truly complete until there is reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles. This idea is borne out in Ephesians where Paul says, "His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility" (TNIV).

I love the language of "one new humanity out of the two." While I'm not completely sold on Torrance's idea yet, it's very intriguing. It sure sounds like Jesus's activity makes the way for Jews and Gentiles to be reconciled to God and each other . . . and not only that, but actually becoming one! A new unified humanity is to be created from hostile groups by the peace brought by Jesus. Calling back my professor's experience, I find it ironic that it takes the American military machine to bring about a manifestation of unity in the body of Christ. No other people of the Book can tolerate worshipping together, but those who are engaged in the dubious mission of peace by way of bloodshed in defense of the god America can. Fascinating.

New World

2009-01-13T11:11:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting in American Church History class, and I just made a startling (but probably not new) discovery. The whole idea of the land Columbus discovered being known as the New World was a secular millennial hope. After the Catholics and Protestants got tired of butchering each other, thinkers realized that revelation couldn't be the authority and discovered reason as the universal authority. It would be dumb to trust a new heavens and new earth idea coming from the Bible. With the new found goodness of man and optimism from reason, they didn't need the Bible for a redeemed earth. Let's leave the Old World and set up a New World! Everybody had some form of millennialism, some based on the Bible, others on reason.

WALL • E

2009-01-02T12:32:00.003-07:00

My wife and I finally watched the whole movie last night. We watched the first half over Thanksgiving with our nieces, and the first half again over Christmas in a crowded, not-paying-attention room because our nephew wanted to put it in.

I'm still in shock at how someone can put together a sci-fi, romantic comedy, kids' movie. Animated. A very, very impressive work.

One could contend that this movie is another propaganda piece by liberal wingnuts. I guess I don't have any defense against that thought. It did feel agenda-laden at the beginning for me, but it's an agenda that I'm very sensitive about. I abhor the consumptive habits in America, and it saddens me greatly that consumption is identified with freedom/the American dream. Consumption is being exported to people who are doing just fine without a consumer mentality. Or, worse yet, they're not doing fine because of bad government or bad resource usage, and they're still becoming consumers, because that gets them closer to America (they think). Point being, I don't think that giant trash heaps are unrealistic. I'd prefer to not find out if they're realistic, simply by being better stewards and a little more sensible about how we use resources.

SPOILER ALERT from here on: I'm also impressed with the theology in the movie. There's an interesting orders in creation thing going on. I know that this ancient idea has been used to oppress women and other races, but I think there's a general order: the Creator, all humans, then all creation, with humans lovingly stewarding the rest of creation and leading them in righteousness, justice, and peace. The point was really sharpened for me when the robots were shown explicitly subjugating humans in the fight between the captain and the autopilot. But the captain makes some explicit statements that this order is not right and the robots must submit to the humans.

I appreciated the captain's assertions that humans were made to till the soil to work for their food. In a simple movie clip, you have a fairly robust theology of work and a theology of creation wrapped together. There's the humorous bit where he says that you can grow pizza trees, but after 700 years in exile under anesthetizing robots, who wouldn't think there was a pizza tree? Also, I think this is a tree I would like to have.

It brought tears to my eyes to see the credits. In a fascinating choice, the filmmakers chose to put the point of the story (okay, only in my theological eyes) in the last minute or so of the movie and the credits. The initiative of the humans with the help of the robots brings about a restored Eden from the absolute barrenness of human-wrought destruction. To make it more explicitly biblical would have had Jesus as the captain who led the restoration of creation.

There's even an egalitarian moralization in the story of the robots. Why would EVE, apparently one of the most powerful robots, take a romantic interest in WALL • E, the oldest extant robot technology? Then they lead the charge (based on EVE's directive) to get the humans back to Earth, even though the viewer is saying, "No, don't do it! It's uninhabitable!" In a short time, with the robots help, Earth is once again inhabitable.

Another interesting point (with my warped point of view) is that one human can encourage the most excessive consumption and give up all hope for restoration. Another human, born in exile 700 years after the exile, can see the possibilities and lead humanity back to its appointed place as stewards and redeemers of the creation. It's a monodimensional point of attitude and positive thinking, but it's a good one, particularly when coupled with the idea of reclaiming humanity from consumerism.

Being truly human

2008-12-23T15:53:00.002-07:00

I just read an interesting and depressing and thought-provoking post by Don Miller: http://donmilleris.com/2008/12/23/lucy-and-me/. He features his very cute puppy Lucy. Most of my comment on his blog, I've reposted here, since it involves the sort of musing I try to foster here. Might be good to read his post first.

What a phenomenal (ly depressing) post! I think you’re getting at something we all need to reflect on. I was having similar thoughts when my company reduced our paychecks to 32 hours and said with a wink, “Now, don’t work more than 32 hours!” I work for two different publishing departments. You think I would want to only work 32 hours? My life would be hell!

So I’m trying to find the human balance between über-diligence (where I snap at people around me that I don’t have time to talk) and slackitude. NT Wright said it well: We’re not computers made of meat. Where is the balance, particularly when you feel you’ve reattached enough participles for the day? Our ancestors lived hard lives, but they knew when they were done plowing their plot or sowing or harvesting. Our informational work never ends.