Happy December!

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

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."

Campaign flyer

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

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.

Destiny

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

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.

Dragon!

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.

How to Train Your . . .

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.

Prophetic

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.

Syncretism

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.

The New Reformation

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Holy smokes, JK!

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.

Unwelcome

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.

Publishing

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

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.