In Broken Places

Image of the Trinity

2012-01-12T10:32:00.003-07:00

"Wherever you go, there you are."
Nope.
If you are running to "find yourself"
you will always carry with you
and so find "there"
a shell of who you are.

But you will also find there other people
offering yourself to you
by asking everything of you.

untitled

2012-01-03T10:36:00.001-07:00

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?
Just so much Jibberish;
We were walking on the Sea.
Surely you are
the Son of God.

Church Planter's Ballad

2011-10-13T09:20:00.003-07:00

I am but dust.

God's breath enlivens this dust.

Bankruptcy. Ridicule. Hunger. Homelessness.
Fundamentalists. Power Brokers. Fear Mongers. Internet Trolls.

Cannot Harm dust.

Nor can they harm the breath of God.

Ikon

2011-10-13T08:43:00.003-07:00

During prayer this morning, I pictured my own funeral. The artistic renderings of the cross and the empty tomb at the front of the chapel were more prominent than the casket.

If this proves true at my actual funeral, then the body lying in that casket will have been put to good use and will attain a glorious hope.

Tedious and Beautiful Work

2011-08-24T09:57:00.004-07:00

Off and on for a long while now I have been working on hand copying the Bible. I am about 3/4 of the way through Genesis, and started doing this simply as a discipline, like the manual labor of the Desert Fathers. As such, it has been very fruitful to pay attention to what thoughts arise as I do this tedious work.

There are MANY distractions. Like: I should just read a Psalm? I love that earthy poetry so much more than I love copying this earthy genealogy. Or: should I play with switching the way I do my lower-case "a's"?

But many beautiful insights often come as well, and in surprising places when I force myself to slow down and engage with the text in this way. One of the most common blessings has been one I, given my own inclinations and interests, desperately need: I often think of some words of encouragement for others. This, I hope, helps them as I pause to shoot them a quick email or give them a call, and then get back to my self-imposed copyist work. But it also helps me appreciate the depth of the people around me and how blessed I am to have the opportunity to steward these relationships.

Incarnation is Hard Work

2010-05-24T09:44:00.003-07:00

We constantly compare ourselves to others. In fact, it seem we are indeed quite good at praying without ceasing, so long as our prayer is like that of the Pharisee in Luke 18:11.

However, rather than finding our identity in the distance we can put between ourselves and others who are less successful, our deepest identity is rooted where we are like all other people - weak, broken, sinful, but sons and daughters of God.

This matters deeply to me, as I have recently been wrestling with ambition and the perceived need to achieve. Sometimes I mistakenly take thoughts like the above to allow, or even require, laziness. But, rightly understood, this shows me that hard work should come as a result of our love for others and the concomitant desire to serve them, and is not necessarily rooted in the desire to distance ourselves from other in order to compare. When rooted in love, this work is the recapitulation of the incarnation - an act that brings us to intimate closeness in Christ.

Hiding in Bold Exposure

2010-04-20T09:42:00.005-07:00

"And only when the clear sky again looks through the broken roofs (of Cathedrals) and down upon grass and red poppies on broken walls - only then will I turn my heart again towards the places of this God."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zurathustra"

Many mourn the fall of Christendom, either through wails or battle cries or forwarded emails, but others celebrate it. Neitzsche and I would both fall into this latter category, though for fundamentally different reasons.

I see that now we have nowhere to hide but in Christ, and he, in our hiding, constantly pushes us out into the world in a new bravery birthed in love. Therefore the crumbling walls of cathedrals mark a time of enormous potential for a truly surrendered, and thus truly embodied, faith of boldness.

Good Friday

2010-04-02T21:33:00.000-07:00

May you grow to love the God-man who lived our life and died our death. May you know the victory he has won as he took all the evil that rebellious powers could pour out, absorbed it and rendered it powerless. And may his courage take root in you and enable you to live for God and the salvation and healing of those around you.

Multidirectional

2010-03-29T09:35:00.002-07:00

"The church as an often fallible human organization needs our forgiveness, while the church as the living Christ among us continues to offer us forgiveness."
- Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

Healing requires forgiveness, and forgiveness must both be offered and received in order to heal.

Trespass

2010-01-05T09:01:00.003-07:00

Hear this well: God is looking on us right now in love. Whatever else we may feel colors his vision, is wrong.

But, why is this love so difficult to accept, especially when it is impossible to live without? Perhaps it is exactly because it is impossible to live without, and there is something inside all of us obstinately bent towards death.

If our life is death, then death is life.

Let us trespass in the realm of death.

An Advent Meditation

2009-12-09T09:25:00.004-07:00

God's coming cannot be forced or coerced. It comes only as a gift. And as a gift, we must wait for the giver. But this waiting itself, even if painful and characterized by a felt absence, is the reception of God's gift of God's-self.

See, we can only truly long for the presence of one who is already present to us. We can long for someone, in the abstract, who is absent and unknown, but we can only long for God, in the particular sense of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who fully revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth, this God we can only long for as his very presence creates in us the longing we feel for his presence.

So, may we, in our Advent longing for God's presence, sit in both anguished longing and the peace of God's presence, for they belong, indeed can only exist, together.

Starvation in the Land of Plenty

2009-10-20T10:55:00.004-07:00

This morning, I read this during the morning prayer of the daily office: "Nourish your people, Lord, for we hunger for your word.

As I was praying it for us, I thought, "Can I pray this? Because I'm not sure we really hunger for God's word."

Then I realized that I was placing too much importance on our own awareness. Realize it or not, we are hungry. Starving even.

There comes a point when a person is starving (in the sense of actual, life-threatening starvation, not in the 'argghhh! I haven't eaten in like 6 hours' sense most of us are used to) when the hunger pains the person once felt fade away. This is because the body has begun to eat itself! At this point, even the though of food becomes unappetizing. But this does not mean the person is not malnourished. Is not slowly descending to death.

So, we certainly hope we become aware of our condition. But until then, we pray, "Please do not wait, O Lord! For we are starving for your word."

This leads to a more truthful understanding of the next line I prayed: "Rescue us from the death of sin and fill us with your mercy, that we may share your presence and the joys of all the saints."

Kenosis

2009-08-27T06:50:00.002-07:00

those of us with homes and cars and dining sets.
with refrigerators, 401(k)'s and televisions.
with furniture and electricity and cable modems.
those of us who can go two months without wearing every outfit in our closets.

those of us who have letters behind our names
and preach in churches rather than from the church ...

... we have less to give God than the destitute.

may You take our abundant nothing and make something.

For Someone:

2009-07-16T10:24:00.001-07:00

We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

- W.H. Auden, "The Age of Anxiety"

Prayer: Reversing Narcissus

2009-06-16T09:13:00.005-07:00

As it was with Narcissus, when we look at nothing but our own face, we die.

As it has been with so many anonymous and well-known saints, when in prayer we look upon the face of God, we die.

But these are entirely different deaths.

Wilson, Colbert, and Ehrman

2009-04-11T17:22:00.007-07:00

Bart Ehrman (New Testament scholar from UNC) recently published a book that is getting a lot of attention, "Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)." If you are not familiar with Ehrman's work, this clip from The Colbert Report is an entertaining introduction.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm /
10:30c

Bart Ehrman

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

NASA Name Contest

For anyone who is interested, I'm linking a paper I recently wrote in which I argue that the Gospel of Mark - the gospel generally held to be the oldest (and I say "generally" because who knows? a lot of people think a lot of things) and used by many who share Ehrman's skeptical point of view to argue for an earlier "low" Christology (that if you go back far enough the earliest followers of Christ never believed Jesus was truly God) - instead presents a very "high" Christology (that Jesus was God) throughout in the way the author structures and presents the narrative. It's somewhat long for a blog post (18 pages), and not necessarily for everyone. But, if you are interested in how I might respond to Ehrman, given the chance, this would be it.

You'll see that, on the issue of the title "Son of God" I actually agree with Ehrman. Though only so far, because I also agree with Colbert's response. Though Ehrman is a little right, Colbert it more right. :) Ehrman uses that little bit of info as a straw in a massive straw man argument that lifts the title, that can indeed refer to a mere human, out of its narrative context. Anywho ... if you're interested, here it is:

I would love any feedback. I'm sure part of Ehrman's work would include arguing for the surgical removal of some or all of the very stories I use from Mark's gospel. But, to put it crudely for the sake of space, for many reasons I reject this type of approach. I think in this type of surgery the patient always dies on the table. However, if you're undecided and want some more to read, Ben Witherington's response here and part two here deals with texts that are even earlier than the gospels.

Question

2009-04-02T23:27:00.003-07:00

Viktor Frankl once wrote, "...we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

I am working on a project that will hopefully turn into a message series, and, in the interests of that project, I have intentionally lifted this quote out of the context in which Frankl originally placed it so I can ask you this: what makes the difference?

(Rightness) Beneath Our Feet

2009-03-17T12:55:00.003-07:00

i sit in a crowd
i led for years
and watch as they lean,
they're straining to hear
words from my wife,
who keeps her mouth closed,
but speaks with the wind
and cries as it blows.

i lie in a bed
dressed by a queen,
my hand on her chest
to feel how to breathe.
her head remains bare,
uncovered like trees
that crowd like a church,
and blush in his breeze.

i watch as she seeks
a peal in a sea
that's brown from the waste
of preachers like me.
she comes up for air
by diving below
(her gills are her prayers)
like water from stone.

The #1 Song When...

2009-03-11T21:52:00.003-07:00

I found this over on Tim Keel's blog. Good fun. It will tell you what was the number one song on any date.

What was the number one song the day I was born? "(Just Like) Starting Over", by John Lennon. Sweet start.

The day my wife, Amy, was born? "Let's Hear it for the Boy" by Deniece Williams. They can't all be great...

My 16th birthday? "Un-Break my Heart" by Toni Braxton.

My 21st birthday? "How You Remind Me" by Nickelback. I'm embarrassed.

The day I graduated college? "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani. *Sigh* Dropping four in a row.

The day Amy and I married? "Promiscuous" by Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland. Wow. Totally inappropriate.

They day my son was born? "Just Dance" by Lady GaGa. Ahrrrrgh!!!

You know what, nevermind. The site sucks. Don't go there. I was a fool for thinking #1 songs might be consistently good anyway.

Ash Wednesday

2009-02-26T10:46:00.002-07:00

I held my son today and nearly wept,
for he is mortal.

I hope some day I can weep tears of joy
over his transience.

Today I could not.

From An Environmentally Conscious Christian and New Father

2009-02-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

Animation

2009-02-17T11:10:00.004-07:00

contemplation and action:
a beautiful marriage
but like any vow
tying there and then to here and now
is oh so difficult to sustain.

in a moment
i often go
from Peace to anxiety,
effortless Breath
to constricted chest.
what pernicious etherial smoke
has been breathed into the pink lungs of Being?
what vacuum sucked in in?
infused solicitude into the veins
of the universe that simply Is?

Bread and Wine:
carnal and Divine
essential Blood and Breath
preserving the This from merely this
granting work to be beautiful rest.

I'm Glad Youtube Was There To Film This

2009-02-12T19:45:00.001-07:00

Embracing the Shadow

2009-02-02T09:37:00.003-07:00

I'm respectful of therapy and make use of it, but I want to use it now as a point of comparison to transformation. Much therapy today is a needed way of dealing with our problems. On the level that we can solve problems, most problems are phychological in nature. But, in fact, most solutions are spiritual. Therefore we have to eventually move from trying to solve them (which is good and needed) to knowing that we cannot finally solve them at the level that matters. Maybe we can only forgive them, embrace them, or weep over them.
- Richard Rohr. "Everything Belongs"

January 25, 2009

2009-01-25T18:27:00.005-07:00

I do not want to present an overly romanticized vision of this whole thing, as, for one thing, I am convinced that a more consistent pro-life ethic would allow us to be moved to wonder (and repentance) far more often.

But this morning, I caught a glimpse of Eden and the New Jerusalem as my son, Corbyn Davis Ryland was born at 7:56 a.m. He was 6 lbs. 3 oz., 20 in. long.

I was also profoundly aware of the already-but-not-yet nature of our current existence as I watched my wife labor (a term that I am now sure is a euphemism) to usher him into this world, and could not help but remember (employing the full Christian sense of the word) the woman I heard mourning the loss of her infant 10 weeks ago in a hospital chapel.

The moment was incredibly unspeakable.

To a ...

2009-01-22T15:06:00.002-07:00

You never were normal
but you never knew
That you shouldn't function
like normal folks do

Chalk lines on the asphalt
still no one would talk
Though some read the story
in your tip-toed walk

Your mom shut her eyes
but saw it for sure
Just re-wrote your ending
her sorry-sincere cure

We all remained silent
tongues tied by consent
And maybe that was best
time then was better spent

Mobile: standing and walking
you were able to feel
Emotion in ignorance
though no less real

But the day that they told you
you were a sick boy
a switch flipped inside their heads
that made you unlike their stout son
now you're dependent, decrepit instead

the words, "you sick" didn't do a thing
to wound your fight and confidence
it was the tone of their voice, and loss of your choice
that distressed your belligerence

so late the next evening
when you were not looking
defense slipped out the back door
and left you alone, like your mother's first lover
whom she never sees anymore

since the day that they told you
that you were a sick boy
it's happened just as they've said
you've proved nobody wrong
just showed 'em all right
affirming their arrogance
and promoting doctors to prophets
and by eighteen you will be dead.

Just for Kicks and Giggles

2009-01-08T12:12:00.002-07:00

Amy and I are fast approaching the arrival of our son (the due date is 1.29) so I thought it would be fun to hold an impromptu internet pool for our friends who are not close enough/around enough to take part in the one we have going. So, post you best guesses on (1) when the baby will arrive, (2) what he will weigh, (3) how long he will be, and (4) what he will be named. The person who comes the closest in the most categories will receive kind words and blessings in an upcoming post (don't get too excited...many have already guessed).

Here's a hint on the name: it is biblical, but it is not a biblical name.

Grace and Peace.

...

2009-01-08T09:28:00.005-07:00

i want to rupture this
but i'm not sure
why
or what this is

i want to break free
of _________
that weights on me

this condition, this order, this extension, this chaos
this introspection
this...
what?
this circumstance, this system, this emphasis,
this holy mess
this thought process
this!
this?

maybe it's sin
a sojourning symbiote leeched deep within some dark
cavern of my soul
that mistakenly feels adopted and at home
as i join an autocatalytic process of fun death

i'd confess it
and concede to your work if only i knew...
what?

maybe it's me

i would bust this thing that confines
me to mediocrity
and explore the possibilities
of who i could be
if only i could define

maybe it's these people
who limit our potential
and repress our passion
with their liberation
pessimism
and sensibility
is "it" mediocracy?

or,
maybe it is
just me
laziness, apathy
(intertia)
l..e.t...h....a.....r.......g...
y

Den of Robbers

2008-12-22T15:25:00.002-07:00

The clouds will scatter,
Yet the rain will fall.
"A known mystery will drive it all,"
I proclaim in praise.

Yet,
When I question what the skies can see
Because grace showers on my enemy,
All these words I've spoken
Return to me in silence
To remind me
Of the eucharistic promises I've enacted
And then broken.

This is Not Going to Work

2008-10-28T10:13:00.010-07:00

(selling non-success)

What if
we fail?
What if
our selfishness,
dullness,
hurts,
foreign ideals,
cause us to turn
not to you
but upon each other?
What if
we allow
the nothing of our fears
to drive
the glorious something
of the love
that binds us
away,
until we fall
apart,
s ------c -----a ------------ t

--t-----------

--------- e-------
----------------------r--------

?

"What if?"?
is there any other way?
didn't you yourself
fail?
can we do differently
than the first
and still bear their name?
(for the point of bearing that name
is to remember and proclaim
that that name
is not the point)

if so,
then use our brokenness,
(the absence that by its non-being
praises that which is)
as you used
the scattered twelve.

Wow

2008-10-23T19:27:00.002-07:00

This has nothing to do with poetry, but I'm just going to put it out there anyway. If you need/desire a theological deconstruction of this rubbish, ask and I'll be happy to pull out my ax. But I'm pretty sure that won't be necessary.

You may want to cover you computer in some sort of protective plastic before you click here.

Holy Saturday World

2008-10-21T19:13:00.003-07:00

It's a nice heartache
She found there;
It's a new mistake
Done with her same old flair.
So she'll come back alive
With Christ-like scars
To pharisaical eyes
And dead mylar hearts.

She found her life on the other side of the grave.

You've been born again;
Have you ever died?
'Cuz she died more than once
Back when she killed them
With love and a clutch.
Now doubts can occupy
The same space as her faith,
Like the grave that held life.

In sacred silence we wait

In a Holy Saturday world
Where reason's crushed and uncurled
Until the holes in our systems provide
Glimpses of redemption.

It snowed the day
They lifted the lid
And found him hidden away
In the [mud and grit].
They had his friend drag him
Like Simon's cross
Across the pot-holed yard
To the furnace door.

He descended to hell. His ashes fell with the flakes

In a Holy Saturday world
Where reason's crushed and uncurled
Until the holes in our systems provide
Glimpses of redemption.

Is there any way around hell, in this foolish story we tell?

(Copyright 2008)

Poetry and Subculture

2008-10-21T19:11:00.002-07:00

For a bit more on what I wrote about in the last post and hope to do a bit of in my next few posts, see here.

Poetry and Theology

2008-10-08T16:12:00.008-07:00

I love theology. Yet, I am sure many are grateful (or would be, if they took to time to think about it) that God did not give us the Scriptures in the form of a systematic theology textbook. Instead God gave us a collection of stories and poetry and letters - and, often, it is difficult to tell the difference between them - that themselves are not the point but beckon us to Someone greater behind them.

I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately and what it means for my own theological exercises. I have come to the conclusion that essays, treatises, and systems simply do not cut it. They are good. Often necessary. But they themselves are a step to something greater (noticing a pattern?). I am convinced of the necessity (owing a great deal to the very types of essays and articles and books I am now proclaiming insufficient) of incorporating the arts into our theological work. Music (for a GREAT paper on the theological nature of music, see here) and poetry and sustained silence must be a central part of our reflection and spiritual discipline as they often say more than a whole library of the works of brilliant loquacious puffs ever could.

So, I am going to do something over my next handful of posts that is not easy for me. I am going to share the fruit (hopefully this is an appropriate metaphor) of my recent theological reflection: my poetry. I pray these are true to both appellations; that they are both theology and poetry. I also pray they will in some way be edifying to you, the blogging body of Christ.

I would love to engage in any conversation they may spark. And always remember that perhaps the point of our words is to allow us to articulate their inadequacy.

NOT ABOUT A GIRL (I had thought this would be obvious...)

Senses recalled in my head:
Your smell. It might drive me mad.
Soft touch upon my hand;
Sufficient strength to:
Stand me up,
Strangle me.

Dreams find you waiting there,
So far away, again.
I span the distant land
Reaching out to take that same

Offered pierced hand;

The thought of which grips my throat.
But it's your eyes that steal my breath,
And turn cool night to burning day.
As my skin begins to peel

I realize unrequited love will kill.

(Copyright 2008)

It's a Boy!

2008-09-10T10:50:00.005-07:00

My kid has a penis! Granted, it's not very big right now, but we did see him display some amazing dexterity, picking stuff up and such with it. He's going to be trouble.

Now, I'm not going to make a habit of publicly showing off my kid's genitals, but, so everyone can wonder with us, here are my boy's boy parts:

Youtube Crystal Ball

2008-07-18T13:19:00.002-07:00

I believe I may have been granted a glimpse into my future.

*Update* Youtube keeps trying to take this video down. Perhaps they are scared of it's mystical powers. So here she is:

Eschatology of Being Right

2008-06-29T21:05:00.002-07:00

I hope entering into heaven (eternity, the new heaven and new earth) is a transformative, revelatory event, and does not simply afford me the opportunity to say, "I told you so."

This Really Is Our Baby

2008-06-17T12:50:00.004-07:00

Amy and I just got back from our first ultrasound. We are told (by the Doctor herself and the caption on the pic) that this is our baby. There is only one. Which is both a relief and letdown.

We also heard the heartbeat.

It was sort of a liquid percussive sound. It was strange. And that little thud just changed my life. This whole thing just got a lot more scary and a lot more beautiful. In other words, a lot more real. This isn't life in the abstract "vote pro-life" sense. This is an actual peanut-sized life inside my wife. And I helped put it there. How ridiculuous is that?!

Father's Day

2008-06-12T09:51:00.007-07:00

As you all probably know, this Sunday is "Father's Day." I could rant about how such holidays (holy-days) have no ontological reality, but are grounded in a secular ecclesiology, being simply manufactured by rebellious authorities in attempt to co-opt our bodies and souls into a narrative other than the Christian story.

I could. But I will not. Because I want to celebrate it. And I want you to congratulate me (or even send me presents). Because I'm going to be a dad!

Yes, my motives for celebrating and sharing are entirely selfish.

Amy and I have had our first doctors appointment. We're about seven weeks along and everything looks good. No, that is not our ultrasound. But we are having one next week to see if we're having twins, since they run in my family (sort of).

Our due date is January 29. So, we're enjoying every Friday and Saturday morning (our days off) we can between now and then, because after that, it doesn't matter what day it is, sleeping in will be a rare treat, like being moved by a Cameron Diaz movie.

Well Give You Six Bibles For Your Homes and Gardens

2008-06-11T23:53:00.004-07:00

"When the European missionaries came (to Africa)...the Africans had the land and the Europeans had the Bible. The Europeans asked the Africans to close their eyes in prayer. When they said amen and opened their eyes, the Europeans had the land and the Africans had the Bible. But the Africans got the better end of the deal (Tutu) concluded, because the Bible then gave them the rational to ask for their land to be returned and their rights to be respected."

- Desmond Tutu, as paraphrased by Brian McLaren in The Last Word and the Word After That

From Our Cold Dead Hands

2008-05-22T02:46:00.006-07:00

"Sometimes the value of a thing lies not in what we get by means of it, but in what we pay for it - what it costs us."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

I have no doubt that the way I am about to use this quote is unfaithful to the way Nietzsche originally intended it. But little bones of scripture have for years been lifted from the ribcage of a lamb and used as vertabrea to build a serpent. So I am claiming this method for the lamb.

What does Jesus, what does Christian discipleship, cost us?

Nothing. It is a free gift.

No. This Jesus who requires nothing of us is indeed an idol. Nietzsche was more right than he knew. Let's get beyond the easily regurgitated Sunday School answers and the abc's of salvation. What does it cost us? What does it take from us?

Our sinfulness.

The gift of God's Son wrests this from us; and yet it is so precious to us.

Movie Meme

2008-05-13T21:56:00.002-07:00

Wil's meme

1. One movie that made you laugh
Iron Man

2. One movie that made you cry
A Thief in the Night (I was in first grade at a Christian school in Texas when they made us watch this terrible - yet, to a first-grader, terrifying - precursor to the Left Behind dribble).

3. One movie you loved when you were a child
Raiders of the Lost Ark

4. One movie you’ve seen more than once
Pulp Fiction

5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it
Music and Lyrics

6. One movie you hated
Almost Heroes

7. One movie that scared you
The Descent

8. One movie that bored you
Doomsday (Neil Marshall, I thought you were better than this)

9. One movie that made you happy
Tender Mercies

10. One movie that made you miserable
The Serpent's Egg

11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see
None really...unless you count high school boys trying to sneak into Showgirls. I wasn't down with that.

12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with
James from Ratcatcher

13. The last movie you saw
The Black Dahlia

14. The next movie you hope to see
8 1/2

15. Your favorite movie (I added this one)
Persona

Death Metal Puppy

2008-05-01T20:39:00.001-07:00

My description line above promises some metal. So every now and then I have to come through. Enjoy. Throw your neck out.

Perception is Fickle

2008-04-15T08:47:00.003-07:00

Velocity Meadows
by Mark Strand

I can say now that nothing was possible
But leaving the house and standing in front of it, staring
As long as I could into the valley. I knew that a train,
Trailing a scarf of smoke, would arrive, that soon it would rain.
A frieze of clouds lowered a shadow over the town,
And a driving wind flattened the meadows that swept
Beyond the olive trees and banks of hollyhock and rose.
The air smelled sweet, and a girl was waving a stick
At some crows so far away they seemed like flies.
Her mother, wearing a cape and shawl, shielded her eyes.
I wondered from what, since there was no sun. Then someone
Appeared and said, "Look at those clouds forming a wall, those crows
Falling out of the sky, those fields, pale green, green-yellow,
Rolling away, and that girl and her mother, waving goodbye."
In a moment the sky was stained with a reddish haze,
And the person beside me was running away. It was dusk,
The lights of the town were coming on, and I saw, dimly at first,
Close to the graveyard bound by rows of cypress bending down,
The girl and her mother, next to each other,
Smoking, grinding their heels into the ground

Truly Free Market

2008-04-12T11:00:00.005-07:00

I am part of a group within my church that has recently been looking for creative, and, most importantly, fundamentally Christian, ways of sharing our faith. This led us to ask questions about what our faith truly is (or, what/who it is in). How can we share the gospel if we don't know it?

I am in no way claiming to exhaustively "know" the gospel. But we did quite a bit of hard reading, discussing and praying and came to appreciate that the gospel is so much more than being able to recite the four spiritual laws or walk someone down the "Roman's Road." The gospel is about the inbreaking of the Kingdom. Christ ushered in a new rule that is now mixed in with the here and now. It is about allegiance to a King, and this is about a total way of life.

This King is an entirely different kind of King, so, as his subjects, we are called to live an entirely different kind of life. Sharing the gospel is living in such a way that it invites others to come and participate in the Kingdom of God, in the here and now, in the ordinary parts of everyday life, as we wait for the Kingdom to come in its fullness.

This is a big task. So, again, I am in now way claiming that we have figured out how to do this perfectly. But I think we're headed in the right direction.

We realized all this means that the gospel even has something to do with economics. How we value, buy, use and get rid of stuff. So we came up with something we decided to call the "Truly Free Market."

Here's how it worked/works: First we asked our congregation to go out and buy some new clothes for us to give away. We didn't ask for anything ridiculous, simply that when people went out to buy something for themselves, that they think of someone else as well. We also asked for new stuff because we wanted to show people we loved them, and old underwear full of holes says, "here, you throw this away," not, "we love you."

Our congregation responded with incredible generosity. We received hundreds of articles of (good) clothes and over $1,000 in monetary donations we used to buy more clothes (Old Navy clearance rack is awesome for kids clothes, by the way) and diapers, toothbrushes, bottles etc. We then took all this stuff down to a pre-school and set it all up like a garage sale. Except nothing was for sale. We gave it all away.

I was a little surprised how reluctant people can be to receive a gift. We are so conditioned to think something must be earned. One lady even started yelling at one of our girls, saying "Liar! Nothing is ever free!"

She said, "Except maybe this stuff?"

However, not all had such a hard time realizing what this was all about. Once people accepted that we simply wanted to give gifts the responses were as much a gift to us, perhaps more so, that what we gave them.

Especially the kids. You could tell they were used to getting second-hand crap. My wife, Amy, would begin to walk them around to "shop" and they would be all detached and jaded, until she would hold something up and they saw that it really was cool stuff. At those moments, the looks on their faces were worth more than all the stuff we gave away combined. They then went into a funny little exercise of picking up just about everything and asking, "How much for this? How about this? Is this free too?"

Now, I'm not saying that everyone there thought about the event in terms of economics. But, whether they realize it or not, everyone involved learned something about the economics of the Kingdom. It is one based not in shortage or supply and demand and the "freedom" to use this for one's own benefit, but in abundance and grace and therefore in the exchange of gifts for the good of another. Our Lord is one who gives amazing gifts, so we desire to be a people who give gifts too. I pray that as we do this people will come into the sphere of the Kingdom.

UPDATE:
If you're interested, Eric has a nice little post with some good links that deal with the economics of the Kingdom and gift giving here. There is also an insightful little comment that links economies of gift with sustained relationships. You know, FYI.

Not Really Funny Anymore, But I'm Going For It Anyway

2008-03-10T19:51:00.003-07:00

You were cool again, in a David Hasselhoff sort of way, about two years ago, for about 6 months (don't worry, all those qualifiers don't diminish your former coolness a bit). And while the rest of the world may have moved on, I have not forgotten you. Happy 68th birthday Chuck!

That is all.

Rapture

2008-02-14T18:17:00.003-07:00

Have you ever heard me go, "WEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" in delight like a 3 year-old girl? No? Sorry. Had you been with me three minutes ago when I first watched this you would have...in fact, if you want to hear it, give me a call before you hit play and we'll watch it together. That would be fun.

Lenten Prayer

2008-02-13T09:03:00.003-07:00

I waffled a bit as to whether or not I should post something about my lenten prayers. After all, isn't this supposed to be a time of repentance and humility? And couldn't this be seen as the type of boastful praying on the street corners that Jesus warned us about? But then I got embarrassed and didn't really want to share anyway. So now I am, because now it is an act of self-mortification.

I have recently taken to praying the rosary, tough in a slightly tailored fashion. Instead of saying the Hail Mary on the smaller beads I say the Jesus Prayer and I change the focus of some of the Mysteries (mainly just the last two Glorious Mysteries - I understand that the Catholic veneration of Mary is more nuanced that most people think and I believe we need to rediscover more female heroes of our Faith, but there are still some things I am just not comfortable with). If you are unfamiliar with the rosary and all I'm talking about, here is a good summary of the whole thing.

During Lent the Sorrowful Mysteries are said every day (the agony of Jesus in the garden, Jesus scourged on the pillar, Jesus crowned with thorns, Jesus carries his cross, the crucifixion of Jesus). The other day, while meditating on Jesus being crowned with thorns, I thought about how at this point, when the world was mocking his Lordship, he was more Lord than ever. He was as much Lord then as he is now at the right hand of the Father and as much as he will be at his second coming. At this stage, in this type of humiliation, we see what type of Lord rules the Kingdom we have been called to be a part of. Here, crowned with thorns, is our King; this crown of thorns is indeed a crown. He is a different kind of King, so we are to be a different kind of subjects.

This expanded what had been a pretty self-centered prayer time into the corporate realm. Almost without realizing what I was doing I changed the Christ Prayer on the following beads to "Lord have mercy on us."

Indeed he has.

Just Good Writing...In A Way

2008-02-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

You may have already seen these on another blog or in an email, but that is ok. It's no trouble for me to write these things to you again, because they're funny. I'm not too sure how true the story is, but is goes that these were all taken from High School creative writing assignments.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.  

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.  

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse, without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

  4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.  

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.  

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

  7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

  8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

  9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.  

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.  

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.  

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.  

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.  

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.  

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.  

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.  

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.  

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.  

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work .

  21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.  

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.  

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.  

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.  

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

The Coolest Thing I've Found In a While

2007-12-22T15:08:00.000-07:00

Heard of the Human Genome Project? Well, there's a Music Genome Project to. And it rocks way harder. Everyone should go to Pandora Radio and set up a free account. You create your own radio stations (up to 100) based on artists you like, and it plays others in a similar vein. Right now, I'm listening to my own Iron & Wine station. It's awesome, but don't take my word for it. Go experience it yourself.

I'm Always Up For Some Star Wars Humor

2007-12-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

Darth Vader won't just blow up your planet or magically strangle you from across the room, he'll humiliate you too.

This Film's Intense Like Sewing Your Own Stitches and Admitting Your Wounds Are Self-Inflicted

2007-12-08T00:43:00.000-07:00

The work of two of my favorite living artists, Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers, (yup, counting the Coens as one artist, because the work would not be the same without the collaboration) comes together beautifully (in a strange sense) in No Country for Old Men. There is not one moment in this film, about the tide of wickedness flooding the world, where the tension is diminished. The Coen's dry, witty humor does appear. But there is no comic relief. These instants only wind you tighter as you begin to care more about this character only to worry about what will become of them now that they've made you smile. And as you worry about these characters, you worry about this world, and this feeling is further intensified by Tommy Lee Jones' amazing performance, which puts your concern on the screen for you to see.

While I do not ultimately share the worldview of the Coens' or McCarthy, there is much truthfulness in their work. Especially this one. Our God is one who causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, and while this is the case, the world will never be easily divided into us and them, good and evil. The good will suffer at the hands of the evil and the evil will benefit from the work of the good - which is portrayed masterfully in the next to last scene in which a ruthless murderer is helped by a boy on a bike. The lines between good and evil cut right through each and every one of us, and the only thing that puts on on one side or the other is not chance, but the choices we make. Lets just hope that because of the love of Christ more people will be compelled to go on ahead "and make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold" than these artists think will.

The Church and It's Self-Subversion

2007-12-04T16:34:00.000-07:00

There is much discussion, and arguing, and outright yelling going on right now about the church and her formation of doctrine. It is not a new criticism that says the church and her doctrine as we know it is simply the result of Constantine and his political co-optation of the church. That Christianity is what it is because it has been power-hungry from its formal inception. But, thanks to a terribly written novel, an even worse movie and some grumpy atheists, these arguments are finding a larger audience.

Today, I revisited Alan Lewis' "Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday," and found something I wanted to share. He does not deny the role that Constantine and his politics played in the formation of the church's doctrine. However, because of the incarnational nature of Christian theology - basically because God uses people, even the ones who suck royally - truth could (did) still win out, and Constantine ended up, on an eternal scale, shooting himself in his very foot that pressed on the necks of the lowly. But Lewis says it better:

(Forming doctrine is an) uncertain struggle to speak as truthfully as possible, though always fallibly and with penultimacy, (that) happens not in a vacuum of intellectual and spiritual purity, but in the midst of and affected by webs of ecclesiastical, political, and social circumstance. How extraordinary, then, in this case, that it was the doctrine of the Trinity and thus a God of vulnerability and lowliness to which the church's authorities gave clear endorsement in the years and decades following its triumph - however disastrous that establishment of Christendom may have been for the followers of Jesus, crucified by Pontius Pilate. The church did not stop thinking now about the nature of the gospel, theologically anaesthetized by the elixir of political power. RATHER, AN UNDERSTANDING OF GOD WAS SEALED WHICH POSITIVELY CHALLENGED THE VERY NOTIONS OF EARTHLY POWER AND IMPERIAL AUTHORITY WHICH THE CHURCH IN PRACTICE WAS ENJOYING.If ever there was a moment to preserve for its political effect belief in God as monad it might have been when Constantine brought church and state together under a single dominion: "one God, one emperor, one church." In the face of such a claim upon divine monarchy, the ultimate sanctification of earthly sovereignty, the church chose to reject monistic unitarianism for plurality and community within God, the sharing of rule among interdependents rather than its imposition by a single, superior, self-sufficient governor upon inferior subjects. Whatever might be true of the church, of pope and patriarch, of God the church's doctrine said that majesty and glory are revealed in the lowliness of mortal being; that almightiness and power are exercised not ultimately from on high but in the powerlessness of a crucified and buried one; that transcendence and distance do not negate but find expression in vulnerability and intimacy, and in the depths of flesh and loss and death. In such contradictions of the external context, AND SUBVERTING ITS OWN BRIGHT MOMENT OF POWER AND GLORY, the church of Jesus Christ gave birth to a new doctrine which, in spite of everything, bore witness to the scandalous story of the cross by which foolishness, weakness, and nothingness bring to shame all that has existence, might, and wisdom. (emphasis mine)

Here, doctrine seems to provide its own nice critique of those who attack it, as well as those who form it.

May we always be open to the critique of the truth, and remember that it is not ours to own, but rather that by which we are to be owned.

I Really Wanted To Put A Curse Word In This Title

2007-09-18T12:04:00.002-07:00

I was fooling around on the net and came across the George W. Bush fansite on myspace and found this little treasure:

I know my blog is extremely insignificant and as much as Charlie, Scott, Pastor John and other like minded bloggers carry out our little cyberspace war, civil religion will persist. But I simply cannot let this go. My conscience would harass me and I'd go home and be curt with my wife and neighbors and dog and would be too distracted to work on my paper that is due before Friday and none of this would be any good for anybody. So let's take a little look at this shall we? This will at least let me think I've done something.

"The thing that separates the American Christian..."

- Wow. In seven words George Washington has succeeded in rending the Body of Christ that Jesus gave his life to establish. It is fitting that he does this in seven words (seven being the biblical number of completion) because he has completely set American Christians above and against every other Christian in the world (remember, England was a Christian nation too). This is a classic (in both senses of the word) example of the powers that be using peoples' faith to subsume them into a nationalistic identity and agenda. If people can be made to believe that their government is the only one that truly sides with God then they will do anything for that government. Even kill other Christians. Because they are no longer seen as true Christians. Because the are not American Christians.

- What really separates the American Christian from every other person on earth is those who understand themselves as AMERICAN Christians have bought into exactly this type of rhetoric. It is no longer our identity as a part of the redeemed, as one of those from every nation and tribe who have been washed by the blood of the lamb and bought with a price (Revelation 5:9; 14:6), that allows us to see others who are radically (culturally, ideologically) different than us as brothers and sisters in Christ (Romans 10:12-13; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11), but our being born into or submitting ideologically to a specific, divisive, nationalistic agenda that estranges us from our Christian brothers and sisters. (FYI: most Christians is the Holy Land are Palestinians. How close are we to them?) This is supposed to be a good thing? That American Christians are better than all other Christians?

Whatever happened to the catholic Body of Christ? Precisely this type of evil. The sheep no longer recognize the voice of the Shepherd, so we answer the insatiate calls of the wolves.

"...from every other person on earth is the fact that he would rather die on his feet than live on his knees."

- Now, forget restricting this to being an issue between Christians. This gorgeous little bit elevates the issue to a whole new level of ethnocentrism. It separates us "FROM EVERY OTHER PERSON ON EARTH?" Seriously? What about the slaves who initiated rebellions (The Stono Rebellion, The New York Slave Insurrection of 1741, Nat Turner's Rebellion, etc. etc. etc.) against the white American Christians that forced them to live on their knees? What about the 1851 Indian Tax Rebellion in San Diego? Or the Texas-Indian Wars, et al?

Well...sorry. My emotion got the best of my pragmatism and I got off track there. Obviously they were inferior to the American Christian's who rebelled against England because they lost to said American Christians. Butt-kicking = verification of truthfulness. Job was soooo wrong. I can't wait to tell him in paradise.

- And I said we'd forget this being an issue between Christians, but I cannot help but ask, "What about the Christians in the colonies who were against rebellion? Some who formed their stance on their Christian beliefs?"

Oh, sorry, I made the same mistake twice. They lost.

It's not like Christianity was founded on losing or anything. I think I'm starting to come around and see how much of a good thing it is that we no longer follow a gospel that is foolishness to the world, that confounds the wise, and uses the weak to shame the strong (I Corinthians 1:23-31). Who wants a gospel that doesn't guarantee us bloody victory over our enemies of flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12)?

Read What Words Cannot Express

2007-09-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

"God of all grace, whose thoughts toward us are ever thoughts of peace and not of evil, give us hearts to believe that we are accepted in the Beloved; and give us minds to admire that perfection of moral wisdom which found a way to preserve the integrity of heaven and yet receive us there. We are astonished and marvel that one so holy and dread should invite us into Thy banqueting house and cause love to be the banner over us. We cannot express the gratitude we feel, but look Thou on our hearts and read it there. Amen." - A.W. Tozer

This prayer comes from a little book I've been reading entitled, "The Knowledge of the Holy." Sometimes Tozer's modern Calvinism throws me a bit (e.g. what exactly he means by us being accepted "in" the Beloved - that little preposition bears huge interpretive options and theological consequences). However, Tozer usually escapes many of the pitfalls of modernity by immersing himself in the writings of the Saints. In this small book (124 pgs.) he quotes and interprets through "The Cloud of Unknowing," Miguel de Molinos, Julian of Norwich, The Athanasian Creed, St. Anselm, Novation, and Nicholas of Cusa. We are all, to a great extent, products of our environments, and it's refreshing to see someone, especially someone who had recieved no formal education, intentionally choose to expand their formative context to include the faithful who worked from a completely different set of (often more truthful) assumptions. One would be hard pressed to assemble a group of influences any less modern than the above. (Especially Nicholas of Cusa: Attaining a knowledge of God through the divine human mind that was unattainable through the senses? Calling the knowledge gained through the senses "learned ignorance?" Come on now! Enlightenment be damned!)

Regardless of these little bits here and there that cause me to raise a post-modern eyebrow, Tozer's work indeed "breathes a spirit of devotion." Hold Warren or Olsteen's work up next to Tozer's and they look like a corpse next to an Olympic athlete.

Maybe that was a little to harsh...No. It's about right. Just look at the last two lines from the above prayer, unpack them, then let them rip apart your modern assumptions that reduce faith and worship to linguistic systems and propositions. Oh, and while you're at it, let it draw you into deeper communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I believe one of the signs of a truly faithful Christian thinker and writer is that their own work in one line or paragraph will criticize itself in another section. If this is true, though Tozer is definitely no Augustine or Anselm, he is indeed in line with the writers at whose feet he intentionally sat.

This Is Just Crass

2007-09-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks of my life have been spent in intense study of the book of Revelation with Dr. Andy Johnson and a handful of great students (including Scott) at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. I do not pretend to now understand everything about the book. Far from it. In fact, I probably have more questions now than I did going in to the class. But I feel like I can now say, with absolute certainty, that this is not the way to do interpretation on chapter 21. Though I'm happy to see that there will be a place for midgets.

p.s. I also managed to watch three seasons of Scrubs with Scott in between all the studying. And though I'm convinced that, thank God, heaven will be nothing like the above, I'm sure Turk will be there. Because it just wouldn't be heaven without him.

Random Facts/Habits

2007-07-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

I've been tagged by Charlie (a long time ago).
The rules:
1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

My Eight Random Facts/Habits
1. Fact: I was out of town on a Youth Ministry trip on my 1 year anniversary.
2. Habit: I read on the toilet. Therefore I spend much more time, on average, on the toilet than should be necessary.
3. Fact: I bite my fingernails, but I'm so good at it that most people think I obsessively clip them.
4. Habit: I am terrified of public restrooms. Therefore, if my business necessitates actual flesh on porcelain contact, I make a toilet paper butt gasket no fewer than three layers thick.
5. Fact: I love my wife and feel terrible about missing our first anniversary. However, I feel that our impending trip to Hawaii (on which we will hit each island, and for which we will pay NOTHING) kinda begins to make things better.
6. Fact: I recently caught a glimpse of heaven when some students from my youth group fed a homeless man in St. Louis named Carlos, then I prayed with him, then he sang us a song he wrote (which was surprisingly quite good and the performance of which was actually very moving.)
7. Habit: My wife and I routinely blame everything on our dog, Marley, then threaten to do horrible bad parent type things to him. It's all in good fun though.
8. Fact: I am not going to tag anyone because I don't know enough people who blog well enough. So I'll just re-post the people Charlie tagged in case you are interested enough to follow the train back up the tracks.
Wilson Ryland, Eric Lee, Kaz Trypuc, Brian Postlewait, Mike Murrow, Rusty Brian, Matt Martinson and Mike King

A Fourth of July Prayer from Isaiah 42

2007-07-02T09:57:00.000-07:00

O Creator God, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who establishes and destroys the nations.

Thank you for sending your Son, who shows us how to best know you by leading us down a road we had not known, faithfully bringing forth justice in all the ways that we had failed to do so before, and making our hopes a reality on earth.

But help us, your people now, who again fail to trust and acknowledge your justice, even though you have laid it out before us. How much worse are we who still hope in that which you have shown to be dust? Who return to our dark prison of violence and who bow before foreign flags?

Bring us to repentance. Restore our breath that comes not from the world's miasmatic air, but from your teaching and Spirit.

May we not fail you again, but may we be the beacon of righteousness that you created and called us to be so that the world, when confronted by you in your fullness, will be unable to say that it has never seen you.

In the precious name of your Son, Jesus Christ, who alone is Lord, and through the power of your Holy Spirit - May It Be So.

This Changed My Life

2007-06-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

This was the result of a dare I recieved Wednesday at our district high school camp last week.

Yes, I did both sides.

Yes, I can use deodorant, but only since last Saturday. Though, thanks to Tony Johnson, I'm going to try switching to women's deodorant for a while. It's designed for females who are hairless precisely because of these types of sado-masochistic practices and may be gentler. Plus, as he reminded me, it has a nice floral smell.

Yes, it burns when I sweat. So I try to stay out of situations where I would.

No, I don't regret it, though I probably won't ever do it again. Kinda like when I stuck my finger up my butt when I was three. It wasn't pleasant. But I learned a lot and am a different man now.

We're Talking About More Than Prayer Here

2007-06-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

'Have You Prayed for bin Laden Today?'

Brother Andrew urges Christians not to "black list" radical Muslims.

Deann Alford

Brother Andrew, founder of the persecuted-church ministry Open Doors and author of the forthcoming book Secret Believers, has been traveling to the Middle East for more than 30 years. During that time, he has met with Israelis, Christians of all kinds, and Muslim leaders from Fatah, Hamas, and other radical or militant groups. Ever since his Cold War days taking Bibles behind the Iron Curtain (made famous in his 1967 autobiography, God's Smuggler), American Christians have often responded to Brother Andrew's reports with some degree of skepticism, but always with awe. Christianity Today senior writer Deann Alford recently interviewed Brother Andrew on the current Gaza crisis and Christian relations with fundamentalist Muslims.

What have you heard about the current situation inside Gaza?

The situation is quiet at the moment. [The conflict] will continue, and one party will have full control. Gaza will not only be a prison camp, but also will become a concentration camp. It will become much worse, not because of the Islamist influence, but because of the repression from outside. The boycott and all the feelings that come from outside. That includes you and me, our nations, our governments.

What will a Hamas-controlled Gaza mean for Christians and everybody else?

It looks confusing. And yet, it is not. I talked to the Hamas leaders years ago about what they wanted. This is exactly what I see happening today. They follow a plan, and there's nothing wrong with having a plan. We also have a plan. We read the Bible. We have sort of a mental concept of what it's going to be, and Hamas has that, too. They have a very strong belief, and they act upon it, that in the end times in which we now live, they believe that Islam is going to conquer and rule the world. And what they see—in very concrete terms in Gaza and West Bank and the surrounding countries, across Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan—is a pan-Arabic republic. No borders. No Jews. They say that literally. That's not antagonism. That's their faith dictating them to say so.

So I said to them, "There's no room for Christians. You're going to persecute us." They said, "No, Andrew, there will always be a place for Christians like you." So far, my own contact, and that of the Baptist leaders and that of the Bible shop leaders in Gaza has been very positive with Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Their worldview is in relation to end times. That's why they're willing to die. It's more than statehood. They're not interested in a Palestinian state. They're thinking so much bigger. That's why they have such amazing support among the grassroots level of the people, because of their reputation for not being corrupt, which is absolutely true.

Why have there been so many suicide bombers in recent years?

I challenge the Hamas leaders about the suicide bombers, which I'm terribly, terribly opposed to. I've preached against it. I contended in the strongest terms when speaking with the Hamas leaders, and they said, "Brother Andrew, we agree with you. The Qur'an forbids suicide." I said, "What is it that I see all around me?" They said, "But that is religious." I said, "Of course, you make it a million times worse because now you have a million volunteers."

There's no way we can cope with or challenge that level of dedication. They believe in something, and they're going to die for it. We fight [Islamic ideology] with bombs and armies. We're doomed to lose that battle. We have to go back to the root causes. We have to listen, we have to understand, we have to talk, and then I think we can still make progress.

Speaking as a Christian, they are not our enemies. God loves the world. And in my new book, Secret Believers, we propose the question, "Have you prayed for bin Laden today?" That question should shock a lot of Christians. Of course we haven't! That is why he is what he is. We have an evangelical black list of people we don't want to see in heaven and put bin Laden on top. Saddam Hussein is probably second.

Do you see the Middle East becoming peaceful in the short term?

We are fighting a losing battle, we are sacrificing our young people, we ruin our economy, we spoil our reputation, and we make life impossible for the American dream of Western influence. I love America and Americans. I love our culture. But if God does not see anything in our culture that he wants to protect, we face this self-chosen conflict in which we will definitely go under. And that will be a great shock to us. It's not too late. I passionately plea for understanding of this kind of Islamism. It's the basic root of the problem.

Do you think policymakers in Washington understand Islam very well?

When the chief of staff in the White House a few years ago [Andrew Card] read our book Light Force, he said these guys are the only ones who really understand what is going on in the Middle East. And he said, "Andrew has to preach in the White House." Which I did last year. I spoke about the God of forgiveness as opposed to the God of revenge.

We in the West are following or believing in the God of revenge as much as every Muslim does. So there's no need for us to sit on a pedestal. We have to come down to the foot of the Cross and learn from Jesus. He came to forgive, and he came to die. I have seen this attitude in many Christians in Gaza. It gives me hope for the future.

In my 50 years of ministry, my biggest meetings have been always in the Muslim world, teaching at a university in Gaza, speaking to the medical association there. My biggest meetings with Hamas were with 400 men. Why are we so timid? Why are we so afraid? They barely let me speak at my own evangelical church in Holland! I'm being sarcastic, but it is the truth. I find it easier to get speaking engagements with the Taliban than with my own evangelical church.

Why should evangelicals stay the course and be engaged with the Arabic church in the Middle East?

What Muslims see when we talk about the church is a completely different picture, and it is not the first important point. The most important point is what they perceive of what we say and do. This is what they think of the West: They think every white person is a Christian, every soldier in uniform is a Christian, every bomb is a Christian bomb. Nobody ridicules that idea. When we read about nuclear plans, we always talk about the Muslim bomb. Why shouldn't they talk about the Christian bomb? You see my point?

It's terrific if individuals or local churches or small, effective evangelical missions (I know many and Open Doors is only one) are really engaged with the Arabic-speaking church.

Soon I will be back in Iran. I do that with fear and trembling. I represent Jesus. I represent the body of Christ, and that is not what they perceive of the church. That's not what [Muslims] hear the church say. They see a very one-sided support of Israel. This is foremost on their mind [and] the church that drops bombs on them from F-16s and Apache helicopters. That's what they see the church is doing. It's their mindset. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. This is what it is.

How can we now make an impact, first of all, to say I only represent Jesus Christ? Here is the message. This is his book. Then they listen. They have been taught to listen to and even study the Bible.

They have a holy reverence for the Bible as a book. Whenever I pull out the New Testament or the whole Bible, I can preach whatever I want. I preach very evangelistic sermons there. So here's the tricky part: If Brother Andrew can do it, I think everybody can do it. Because everybody is better than me, and everybody is more able and gifted and supported. I'm just one little Dutchman walking on wooden shoes. Let us do it as a church.

We should be flocking to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and seek the Christians and help them. And then, please, for God's sake, listen to what they say. They have something to say. This should be the driving force in our lives. It's not solving political or economic problems. It's being Christian.

My plea always has been that the church must be the Church, with capital letters.

In our new book, we have a whole chapter on a town in Pakistan that was destroyed by Muslims. We went over there and preached forgiveness openly to the people, to the government, to the military and the police. We had a tremendous time. Open Doors had a big community center, literacy school, training for Sunday school teachers and leaders. And the violence ceased because we officially said, "We forgive you Muslims because Jesus forgave us. And that's the reason of our existence. Jesus has forgiven us—not because we begged for it, but because he offered it."

That should be our attitude. That should permeate the politics of our nation.

What should Christians be doing right now?

Get up and get going for God. It's still not too late. I can still reach them. And I'm not the only one. We can reach the Taliban. We can reach Hezbollah. And I do, actually. I'm not a man with any authority or a mandate, just an individual Christian. I'm not altogether pessimistic. I'm saying at the moment as a church we're not on the right track and we ought to do something about it.

Look at the problem there with very different eyes. It's a religious problem, but it's not their fault that they have not heard who Jesus is. When we look at the history of Islam and other religions, it's always been where we've not done what we should have done, where we have not brought the gospel when we should have. We have not reached out in love and compassion. These things can still be done.

Get to know more facts. What is really happening? Is being radically right the answer? We're not sent to kill people. Nobody is, but certainly not Christians and missionaries.

If we can make the Muslims or al Qaeda our friends by political decision, then we've been killing them in vain. It's murder. So let's stop that. Let's find out the facts. Let's go with an open mind. Let's respect their religion. We've always been taught that way as Protestants.

You can still go to any place in the Muslim world and preach Christ. Any place. I want to challenge the whole world with that statement. And if that is true, then why are we resorting to other weapons that, according to the Bible, are not weapons of our warfare? When are we going to be people of the Book? They claim to be people of the book. I challenge them at the Hamas university on dialogue—and I hate the word dialogue—I'm a proclaimer, a Calvinist at heart. I believe that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. I told them openly, "I'm not interested in dialogue with you guys. But I'm always willing any place, any time, with any group of you, to have a dialogue on this one question: What kind of person does the book produce—your book, my Book?"

You come back to Jesus' words: You must be born again. And they appreciate that. Because I want to challenge them on that issue.

I'm an evangelist. I'm a missionary. If I'm saying things that are politically not correct, I know the Lord will forgive me.

What keeps you hopeful about this desperate situation?

We have a message that God changes people. We still have to go [to the Middle East]. Our philosophy is going. Going takes away your fear. We are fearful because we stay home and prepare for the worst to come, because we think that's what they are planning. That may be true, but it's because of our inactivity. The moment we take the offensive and plan to go there, we lose our fear. That's very Scriptural. I'm not a bit afraid of them. I feel completely at home. I hope to be back there very soon. If I knew I could do something constructive, I'd be there tomorrow.

Deann Alford is based in Austin, Texas, and reported for CT from Gaza in 2005.

The Jason Borne of Christianity

2007-05-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

It is pretty well agreed upon within our denomination that The Church of the Nazarene has lost its sense of identity.

As evidenced by Articles of Faith and the testimony of the founding fathers of our denomination, we are first and foremost a Christian Church, with the SECONDARY distinctive of offering a unique emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit in entirely sanctifying believers.(1) Yet, as evidenced by the practices and theology (or lack of) of most local congregations we are simply, in the words of Rob Staples, "a generic evangelical" Church.

Many would argue that our identity crisis stems from our loss of the American Holiness understanding of entire sanctification as an instantaneous work wrought by the Holy Spirit subsequent to justification. Richard Taylor would be one of these. Others would say that our identity crisis comes from our lax ethical interpretations of what the life of an entirely sanctified believer should look like. My mother would be one of these.

However, I feel that our identity crisis comes from a deeper place, as evidenced by the fact that we cannot even agree on what is causing said crisis.

Mark Quanstrom does a great job of tracing the growth of divergent views on our "distinctive doctrine" in "A Century of Holiness Theology." I highly recommend this book, but I do not feel, as he seems to, that our biggest problem is our inability to agree unilaterally on how to understand and communicate the doctrine of entire sanctification. Neither do I think that what we need is an agreed upon set of rules that will form us into a unified body. I feel our greatest problem, that feeds our inability to agree on sanctification, is that we have gradually, as we tried to carve our place within the denominational marketplace, separated ourselves from the trunk (the catholic church) that gives life to our individual, distinctive branch (the Nazarene denomination).

To reclaim an identity that is not best described as a bland, generic, fundamentalist evangelicalism, we must first rediscover the depth of our Christian heritage. This goes back much further than Phineas F. Bresee, Phoebe Palmer, John Wesley and, yes, even Martin Luther. To truly see who we are in Christ as members of his Body, we have to see that who we are is bigger than a misguided response to theological and ethical liberalism, bigger than our pet economic theory, bigger than the Nation-State in which we live, bigger than a reaction to the abuses of power that the Roman Catholic Church was guilty of(2). We need to see that we are not the end, the climax of God's work on earth. We are instead the product of the faith of our fathers and mothers, and instead of jettisoning them to achieve our own short sighted goals we need to see our place as contributing to the long-term life of the church.

Yet, even this is not enough, is not an end in itself. Doing this will only be beneficial if it takes us from the trunk to our true root: love as understood by the life and actions of God. It is the love of God that led God to work in history through his Son to restore mankind to himself. It is this love that gave the Holy Spirit to continue this work in and through the lives of the disciples. This love is the same love that caused each generation of believers to shape new believers, and therefore to pass the Gospel on to us. It is this love that allowed us to become members of the church today. It is this love that sanctifies us as we participate in it, making it our own as we love God and neighbor.

And it is this same love that must be at the very core of our identity. Not a time line of sanctification. Not a list unacceptable entertainment and adornment. Without this love we are left to our own devices, which will lead us to nothing but nihilistic amnesia.

(1) Yes, this is a particular interpretation of the Articles of Faith, but it is also the way of interpreting that I later argue for as being critical to recovering a unified sense of identity.

(2) Yes, I said "was," not "is." No, I am not referring simply to the sales of indulgences and the carrying out of the crusades, I am aware of what has recently been exposed about the way that the Church covered up sexual abuse (see Amy Berg's documentary "Deliver Us From Evil" for a heartrending treatment of this misuse of power). I used the past-tense because 1. Though the crisis is far from over and much is left to be done for the victims, I believe the Church is repentant, and 2. I believe God forgives. Therefore she was guilty.

Fundi History

2007-05-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Jamie Smith there is an interesting lecture that has been made available here about the history and theology of the American Fundamentalist movement from the perspective of journalist Jeff Sharlet called "Fundamentalist History, Secular Myth, and the Media's God Problem." Good stuff. Let this "outsider" disturb us and help offer us a corrective...please God...

A word of caution though, I am not advocating buying completely into Sharlet's worldview and secularist theology...just listen, because I believe he can help us come to a more honest assessment of where Christianity is (and isn't) in America.

Sharing (Isis) is Good

2007-04-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

I just thought I'd share one of the best heavy experimental bands out there with you. They're called Isis (pronounced eye-sis, as in the Egyptian goddess and archetypal wife and mother) and will be well worth the eight minutes you put into the song.

This is definitely not a cheap quick trip like a 3:30 pop song with an intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, outro structure. Their songs fade in and out and wind all over, taking you somewhere you've probably never been before. Enjoy the journey. Bang your head.

Salvation Crisis?

2007-03-14T11:17:00.000-07:00

It's no secret to any of you (pl?) out there who care enough to regularly check my blog that I have been quite lazy recently. This post does not change that. I ripped it off from Charlie, a truly faithful blogger. Nonetheless, it is good, and important for you to read (if you havn't already on Charlie's behest). It comes from David P. Gushee on the Christianity Today website.

Jesus and the Sinner’s Prayer
What Jesus says doesn’t match what we usually say.
David P. Gushee

Is it permissible to reopen the question of salvation? If we do, how will Jesus' teachings stand up to our inherited traditions?
These questions came to me acutely not long ago. I was getting ready to preach. As the worship leader was finishing the music set, he offered some unscripted theological reflections. He said something like: "The only thing required of us is to believe that Jesus' blood saves us. Nothing more. It's nothing but the blood of Jesus."
In my Baptist context, we've heard these thoughts a thousand times. The problem was that I had in my pocket a message in which Jesus himself had a very different answer to the question of salvation.
The Big Question
In reading through Luke, I had discovered that twice (10:25, 18:18) Jesus is asked, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
In the first passage, Jesus turns the question back on the lawyer who asks it. The lawyer replies with the Old Testament commands to love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself (cf. Mt. 22:34-40). Jesus affirms his answer: "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live." The lawyer then tries to narrow the meaning of neighbor. So Jesus tells the unforgettable parable of the compassionate Samaritan, who proved to be a neighbor to a bleeding roadside victim.
In Luke 18, Jesus responds to the same question, this time from the man we know as the rich young ruler, by quoting the second table of the Decalogue, forbidding adultery, murder, theft, and false witness, and mandating honor towards parents. His questioner says that he has kept these commandments, and Jesus proceeds to call on him to "sell all … and distribute to the poor." Jesus assures him, "You will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." The "extremely rich" ruler won't do this, and Jesus goes on to teach his disciples about how hard it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God.
Trying to be an honest expositor of the texts in front of me, I told the chapel students that morning that on the two occasions in Luke when Jesus was asked about the criteria for admission to eternity, he offered a fourfold answer: love God with all that you are, love your neighbor (like the Samaritan loved his neighbor), do God's will by obeying his moral commands, and be willing, if he asks, to drop everything and leave it behind in order to follow him.
I concluded by suggesting that the contrast between how Jesus answers this question and how we usually do is stark and awfully inconvenient.
Getting Radical
In my Baptist tradition, especially, we direct people to "invite Jesus into your heart as your personal Savior," an act undertaken using a formula called the "sinner's prayer." Or we simply say, "Believe in Jesus, and you will be saved."
But Jesus never taught easy believism. Whether he was telling the rich young ruler to sell all and follow him or telling a miracle-hungry crowd near Capernaum that to do the work of God was, yes, to believe on him (John 6:28-29), he called people to abandon their own agenda and trust him radically. Radical trust calls for both belief and action.
I suggest that we tend to confuse the beginning of the faith journey with its entirety. Yes, believe in Jesus—that's the first step. Yes, invite Jesus into your heart as your personal Savior. Then, empowered by God's grace, embark on the journey of discipleship, in which you seek to love God with every fiber of your being, to love your neighbor as yourself, to live out God's moral will, and to follow Jesus where he leads you, whatever the cost.
If Jesus is to be believed, inheriting eternal life involves a comprehensive divine assessment at every step along our journey, not just at its inception.
Mediocrity and hypocrisy characterize the lives of many avowed Christians, at least in part because of our default answer to the salvation question. Anyone can, and most Americans do, "believe" in Jesus rather than some alternative savior. Anyone can, and many Americans sometimes do, say a prayer asking Jesus to save them. But not many embark on a life fully devoted to the love of God, the love of neighbor, the moral practice of God's will, and radical, costly discipleship.
If it comes down to a choice between our habitual, ingrained ways of talking about salvation and what Jesus himself said when asked the question, I know what I must choose.

"This article was first posted 3/06/2007 on ChristianityToday.com. Used by permission of Christianity Today International, Carol Stream, IL 60188."

These are "Important," not "Best," Because "Best" is not a Theological Category

2007-01-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

Charlie Pardue tagged me to put up my list of most important books of theology published in the past 25 years.

This is the criteria:

Name three (or more) theological works from the last 25 years (1981-2006) that you consider important and worthy to be included on a list of the most important works of theology of that last 25 years (in no particular order).

1. Paul Among the Postliberals by Douglas Harink 2003

2. Torture and Eucharist by William T. Cavanaugh 1998

3. Between Cross & Resurrection by Alan E. Lewis 2001

Theology and History

2006-12-29T09:12:00.000-07:00

I've begun work on my masters. This includes reading, for a class titled Resurrection in the New Testament, N.T. Wright's historical look at the resurrection (both the actual event and the belief of the earliest Christians about the resurrection) called The Resurrection of the Son of God. (How many times can you say "resurrection" in one sentence?)

It has been argued by various theologians, and even some historians, that a historical look into the resurrection either cannot, or should not be done. One theologian, Hans Frei, (whom I happen to like, what little of his work I have gotten around to reading or reading about) falls in the "shouldn't be done" camp. He says that the resurrection is the starting point for any truly Christian epistemology, therefore nothing can be known about it without already knowing it. So the attempt of a Christian historical inquiry into the resurrection will collapse into itself.

Wright obviously disagrees to some extent. He does agree that the resurrection is at the base of any Christian epistemology, but argues that a historical study should be done because it could help one move from one epistemology to a better (more Christian) epistemology. He cites the apostle Thomas as an example. After seeing and touching the actual wounds on the body of the resurrected Jesus he believed.

On this issue I have a few thoughts/questions that I'm looking for some helpful discussion on. One: if we take embodiment seriously then a historical investigation into the resurrection should not prove harmful or fruitless, right? But, two: does such an inquiry, and even Wright's assertion that said inquiry can help move one from one (pagan) epistemology to another (Christian) epistemology, suppose a secular, or "neutral" realm that I have previously rejected thanks to John Wright and my reading in Radical Orthodoxy? (This is basically Frei's protest restated from a slightly different angle.)

From where I am in my thinking right now I don't think Wright's assertion necessarily does presume such a realm. It only does if we compartmentalize events and interpretation of said events. Since we cannot remove interpretation, we cannot remove faith, and only divinely delivered faith will lead to correct interpretations, even of a Christian historical inquiry into the resurrection.

Perhaps I have been guilty of completely disembodying faith. Yes, only faith can make the move from one epistemology to another, Christian epistemology happen. But perhaps God can and will use such a historical study to move one to a Christian worldview. Stated this way, the person would not be moved by unguided human reason but by God, making himself close, holding the spheres together with his presence moment by moment.

Do you agree? Or am I way off?

Burial Shroud

2006-11-20T15:10:00.000-07:00

There is no banner worthy enough to cover the sin of killing beloved children of God.

Voting As Christian Witness...

2006-10-11T15:57:00.000-07:00

...is like discarding a half eaten hamburger in a trash can that happens to be in the vicinity of a homeless person and calling it a work of mercy.

I'm not saying that Christians should not vote. It is a responsible action. Like putting your garbage in a proper receptacle and not dropping it on the sidewalk. But lets call it what it is; and it is not letting the voice of the Church be heard. It is waste management. At best - and it rarely is - the state helps to restrain evil. It does not usher in the kingdom.

Neither party nor any recent candidate embodies the Christian message (No, not even Katherine Harris). Therefore voting = compromise. Picking the lesser of two evils. And witness and compromise are mutually exclusive concepts.

If we care about abortion do we simply vote pro-life then go home and watch TV and eat cheetos and feel good about doing our Christian duty? Dear God I hope not. Because where does that candidate stand on immigration? Helping those living in poverty? Inflation and debt?

I once talked with gentleman who said, "Yea. I may not agree with (a certain politician's) economic stance. But I made a decision long ago to vote strictly by moral issues, not economic theories."

Every issue is a moral issue.

Last I checked God loves Mexicans and poor people too.

"Oh, Wil. You can't have it all."

"Nope. Not within the American political system."

The lesser of two evils may be the better choice between two options. So go ahead and vote that way. But lets quit stopping there. The problem is that we've bought into the idea that these are the only options: liberal or conservative, yes on prop 204 or no on prop 204, legislated morality or ganja fueled peace orgies, elephants bearing their Americanized Jesus that feeds his cherished corporations with the corpses of the poor and then offers them a clear glass of melted glacier water to wash it down, or jackasses herded by Satan himself on a black ATV that runs on an alternative fuel derived from aborted babies and toppled monuments to the 10 commandments.

We've been told to "vote or shut up." If we believe this, if we see voting as our only, or even our primary, voice, then our ballots become the duct tape sealing our lips.

Thank the Living Jesus there is a third option: seeing the Church of Jesus Christ as the primary political entity to which we belong and through which we let our voice be heard. We do not need to continue searching and waiting for the perfect candidate to represent Christianity. I have been told so many times over the past few months as the mid-term elections approach that if Christians do not go out and do our part and vote, then we will be powerless as we watch evil continue to spread throughout our once great nation. Again, sure, vote. But I believe that voting is neither our only, nor our best, avenue for influence.

What is? The body of believers united and mobilized, willing to risk everything, to love God by loving our neighbor.

Since when do we have to wait for laws and governments to change things? The early Church brought about change by getting themselves thrown to the lions by the ruling authorities. They did not need to try to get the state to work on their behalf because they saw themselves as the instruments of God for change. We need no mediator and no law to grant legitimacy or power (efficacy) to what we are called to do. We only need the God-given faith and discipline to actually do it.

Les Miserables Biblical Commentary

2006-09-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

Even if you are not a big reader, the unabridged version of Les Miserables is worth three-fold every minute it takes to digest its 1,463 glorious pages. I give you the following short passage in support of this claim (and I know Charlie Pardue is with me on this one). Though it fits impeccably within the gigantic narrative, it also stands on its own.

...he (the bishop) had his own strange way of judging things. I suspect he acquired it from the Gospels.

In a salon one day he heard an account of a criminal case about to be tried. A miserable man - because of love for a woman and the child she had borne him - had been making counterfeit coins, his real money was gone. At that time counterfeiting was still punished by death. The woman was arrested for passing the first piece he had made. She was held prisoner, but there was no proof against her lover. She alone could testify against him, and lose him through her confession. She denied his guilt. They insisted, but she was obstinate in her denial. At that point, the king's state prosecutor devised a shrewd plan. He maintained that her lover was unfaithful and by means of fragments of letters skillfully put together succeeded in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a rival and that the man had deceived her. Inflamed with jealousy, she denounced her lover, confessed everything and proved his guilt. He was to be tried in a few days, at Aix, with his accomplice and his conviction was certain. The story was told and retold, and everybody was delighted by the magistrate's cleverness. Bringing jealousy into play, he had truth to light by means of anger, and justice had sprung from revenge. The bishop listened to all this in silence. When it was finished he asked, "Where are this man and this woman to be tried?"
"At the Superior Court."

"And where is the king's prosecutor to be tried?"

Read up those of you carrying out this "war on terror."

Will Ferrell and the American Jesus

2006-09-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

How does Will Ferrell get it and such a large portion of the Church not?

In Talladega Nights, Ferrell’s character, Ricky Bobby, refuses to pray to any Jesus other than the “dear Lord baby, infant, 8 pound 6 ounce” (etc.) Jesus. When his wife informs his that he doesn’t need to continually refer to Jesus as an infant because, “he did grow up you know,” Ricky counters, saying he will continue to pray to the infant Jesus. When someone else is praying they can pray to the teenage Jesus in the temple or the adult Jesus in a boat, the dying Jesus on the cross, or even the decaying Jesus in the tomb if they like, but he will only pray to baby Jesus in the manger. Why? Because that is the Jesus he likes best.

Again, I ask: how is it that Will Ferrell can see that Jesus has become nothing more than a personal preference, a consumer option, when so much of the Church continues to, simply and ignorantly, choose which Jesus to peddle when we want to best “reach the people in our target demographic,” and which Jesus to “serve,” or appeal to, when we want something. How is it that Ferrell, the same man who donned a g-string Speedo for his appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, has fingered our deficient interpretations that allow us to make Jesus into whatever best suits our group or individual interests (as determined by ourselves, of course) in various contexts while we continue proof texting in attempt to justify our child-like yearning to get our way?

Are you a combative Republican? Jesus can be that (Matt. 10:34 + Mk. 12:17a). Humanistic Liberal? He can be that too (Luke 17:21 + Matt 7:1). Marxist dictator? Check (Matt. 6:19, in light of Acts 2, + Matt. 10 37-38). Dangerous nomadic criminal? Sure (Matt. 8:20 + Lk. 23:32-33). Hermetic hippie cannibal? Yup (Mk. 1:35 + Matt. 6:25-29 + Matt. 26:26b-28). Let's go nuts; Jesus can even be an entrepreneurial motorcycle aficionado if you want to do some serious scriptural gymnastics (I don’t, but some niche marketing mega churches do). So pray to whomever you like.

Do you not like the Jesus that makes you uncomfortable by calling you out of your old life and into a new one defined by discipleship? Well fine, he doesn’t have to be that anymore. He can now become our spiritual masseur who relieves the tension “other” Jesus’ create. All we have to do is pluck him out of our favorite point in the narrative and construct an entirely new Jesus by creatively re-imagining that newly isolated moment, like the young girl I recently read with during an after school program who dispensed with the book’s story altogether in favor or her own fairy-tales made up on the spot as inspired by the accompanying pictures.

The problem with all of these appropriations is that none of them take seriously the entire, eternal life of Christ. The full Jesus was much more radical and much more distinctive than any of our own creative constructions. That is why his disciples appropriated for themselves an original name that rendered all other appellations obsolete. That title never was and never will be Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Compassionate Conservative, Post-modern, Socialist, Progressive etcetera ad infinitum. No, those simply will not do. Only one will: Christian. And Christians pray to one God through Jesus Christ. All of him. Every last life redefining bit. Take all; withhold nothing.

All Apologies

2006-08-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been away from my blog for so long. It's just that I've been a bit busy getting married and starting a family.

Once again, I apologize.

Homily

2006-07-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I traveled to Port Aransas, Texas, to officiate my first wedding. It was special and strange for me, being that it was my cousin Cheryl's wedding. And even though I am now 25 and she is in her early 30's, in some way she will always be my cool, pretty, older, teenage cousin. The one that used to let me tag along with her and her friends, feeling cool because of my proximity to cool people, sitting in the backseat of her mother's Suburban, with my little can that was supposed to resemble a snuff can full of stuff that was supposed to resemble snuff, but was really only ground up beef jerky, caring nothing about where we were going or what we were actually doing (usually nowhere and nothing). And the one with whom, when it was just the two of us, I could talk about George Strait and Guns 'N Roses in the same sentence. To most of my family that was sacrilegious. But we understood.

Add to this the fact that I myself will be getting married on July 15. So when the time came in the ceremony for me to give my very first wedding homily, I spoke to myself and my fiance as much as I did to Cheryl and Gary, and the whole experience became nearly surreal.

That is the backstory, as well as bits from my introduction. The following is body of the message I spoke.

...That is why we are here. To take part in something truly real. Often we pour our lives into chasing something we think will be real and lasting: wealth, security, prominence. Only to be disappointed when we finally grasp what we've been pursuing, open our hands to behold it, and see that it has disintegrated into dust, as everything that is at the mercy of time will eventually do.

But marriage is not like this, even though you both will die. As you look around today and remember the family members who are not here because they have already passed on, know that one day you too will join them. Even though thinking of yourself as one passing through death seems like something you read about in a science-fiction novel, something you may be able to imagine but you never fully believe that someday you will actually experience it, in due course, you will. But regardless of the temporal nature of your lives and marriage, as you live faithfully in this marriage, it will direct you to something eternal.

Because marriage is not about property rights. It is not about human law, because as necessary as human law may be, it does not have the authority to unite two lives into one. Only God has the authority to do this. And neither is marriage an outward sign of something you have already made real within yourselves. This is not a mere formality. If you surrender to and look for God in your marriage it will be what God intended and your marriage will actually strengthen and sustain your love. Not the other way around.

This sounds weird to many today who make no place for God in their interpretation of marriage. And I can understand this. It used to be a strange thought for me too. I used to think that it was the job of the human heart to sustain a marriage. And this is true to a certain extent; hearts are a necessary element of a faithful marriage. But hearts are fickle and unreliable. But God is not.

See, Gary and Cheryl, God has given you freedom and the ability to choose. And you have employed this gift to choose to commit to each other in love.

God has also given you the ability to love and the capacity to experience it.

But you and I do not create love. It does not matter what some poets or philosophers say, love is not manufactured in the human heart. God is the author of love. And this true love is the most beautiful thing we can know and experience. It brings a new dimension to every aspect of life because God himself is love. It is God's defining characteristic (I John 4:7-8).

Since God is love, we can only know true love as we know God. Without God our experience and understanding of love will always be less than it could be. And if we truly love, we are participating in God himself.

This is what is happening today. Gary and Cheryl, today you are asking for and accepting God's gift of love to the fullest extent that two people can know it between themselves. In a bit we will talk about nasty little things like sickness and poverty. In these times human love would throw in the towel. It would find it easier to (attempt to) sever the ties, (attempt to) heal, and (attempt to) go it alone. But divine love would not only persevere, but grow stronger through these times (I Corinthians 13).

Gary and Cheryl, love as you have known it thus far has brought you to this point. And this is good. It is as it should be. But today, you step a great deal further. You take a step that you could not take without divine aid. Today you are asking God to unite (mystically, but quite literally) you in love.

This act, in this place, is the divine intersecting the human. This is why certain sectors of the Church have considered marriage a sacrament. As God unites you, God will give you a bit of himself.

This is what marriage is about. Marriage is not about property rights. It is not about human law. This is something real. This is something permanent. This is something beautiful.

National Championships

2006-05-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

My fiance, Amy Nanson (shown left, smacking the crap out of the ball), is currently playing in the NAIA national championship tournament (and kicking massive amounts of butt) along with the rest of the Point Loma Sea Lions. I am very proud of her. If you're interested you can follow the results here or even watch a live online play-by-play here (just click on the scores to the right of the game you are interested in - no video, sorry).

I Love This Man

2006-05-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

Chomsky may be right, professional sports may be the biggest single distraction that keeps people (especially Americans) from educating themselves and forming opinions about more important matters...but still, especially after last night, I love Raja Bell. And I will watch as many more 3 1/2 hour playoff games as the suns want to throw at me.

And just for good measure...

Peace.

A Credo On Pain

2006-05-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

I believe in Beauty and Grace,
So I believe in Pain(1).
Because I believe these can be Painful(1),

Because I also believe in pain(0).
And this is hideous and graceless.

Though I have lived them both,

The distinction comes not from
how I experienced or interpreted,
But from the source and the end.
Whether I acted alone, was acted upon,
Was shaped, or further malformed.

Who Fits Who Into What Now?

2006-04-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

I did some kids' homework for them today. One of my co-workers has two children, a daughter who is 11 and a son who is 12, who go to a Lutheran school. Recently I have been entertained/troubled by some of her school stories. Especially one, that is so ironic it's ridiculous, about her son being accused of plagiarizing a poem he wrote on trust. Her disapproving letter to the teacher and principal that soon followed has led to some serious tension. Then, today, she informed me that her students had to finish a major science project by writing a conclusion that explains "how God fits into their findings." I offered my political pastoral skills, telling her that I could smooth things over for her, even the plagiarism issue, if she would let me do her kids assignment, squeezing God into their project somehow. The following is what I gave her. She says she's going to turn it in.

Of course God has something to do with all of this. God is the Creator of all things right? The phenomena I have observed in my experiments would not have happened if God had not established and sustained the created order. The very elements themselves would cease to even exist if God stopped graciously granting them existence. Be they a block of wood or a grain of salt, they only are because God allows them to be. Furthermore, I believe, no, correction, I know it to be true that neither I, nor you, nor any scientist with multiple doctorate degrees, is capable of properly interpreting these observations I have noted if they do not understand everything involved not as autonomous entities, but as created realities. They (not even the afore mentioned grain of salt) do not exist in and of themselves as a part of some independent secular realm evacuated by God. They only truly exist as they participate in their Creator.

What we really have here is a question of ontology. And I believe that a faulty ontology is the groundwork for the requiring of these paragraphs as a part of this assignment. An ontology that finds its roots in Scotus and Descartes, not in God. In the human mind alone, not in the true Faith that illuminates the human mind.

This ontology has caused you to fear the very science you love. You are afraid that science, if it continues unchecked in the apostate direction it has been heading, will succeed in pushing the God you love into a sphere of primitive susperstition. And this assignment is the best you can come up with to keep the younger generations from sacrificing the Faith on the altar of science.

You probably do not know where this is coming from. You might find these accusations unfounded. Well, here is my foundation: Your underlying ontology is betrayed in your instructions. You said, "Then, in a few short paragraphs, explain how God fits into your findings," instead of saying, "Then, in a few short paragraphs, explain how your findings fit into God." Who can compress God and fit the Creator of the universe into anything? If this is my assignment, I admit defeat.

Reason and faith are not mutually exclusive. Therefore I do not buy into the system, so prevalent even within "conservative" Protestant circles, that allows science as pursued as a secular endeavor to dictate what is real and true and then attempts to corroborate faith with science's findings. This inevitably leads to fundamental shifts that morph true Christianity into a sad (though all too convincing) parody. Of course God has something to do with my science experiment. God has everything to do with it. God has everything to do with everything. My question for you, and I am sure there is a good answer somewhere, is: "What does my science project have to do with God?"

She's checking out a pretty decent charter school.

Five Albums To Listen To In The Dark

2006-03-31T21:33:00.000-07:00

Do This! And when you have to time to give the whole album a hearing.

1) John Coltrane - A Love Supreme. Careful, or it might usher you into a form of worship.

2) Meshuggah - I (EP). Just don't call me if you suffer ensuing night terrors.

3) Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It might take you deep enough to learn something about yourself.

4) Radiohead - Kid A. Ever wish you were somewhere else? Perhaps a paranoid "safety" bunker with your family during war time? I hope not. But it would probably do us a lot of good if more people felt at least a little of what it must be like.

5) Melvins - King Buzzo (EP). Let the repetition drive you insane (in a good way) as you begin to hear things you missed the first 60 times the drum riff assulted you... and then wonder if what you hear is really there. Plus there is a nice suprise guest on the last track.

Remember That You Are Dust, And To Dust You Shall Return

2006-03-02T17:24:00.000-07:00

Last night I presided over the first Ash Wednesday service my church has ever done. It was quite a humbling experience; throughout the whole service my sins were exposed. Not just brought to mind, but exposed. Like the way the first sentence of this blog exposes the arrogance that motivated it (I wanted you all to know, or at least sense, that I was the one who proposed and pushed for the observance of Ash Wednesday. To know that I know my Christian Tradition). Last night I was repeatedly shown ways that, as a minister, I attempt¹ to take the work of the Holy Spirit into my own hands and desire, at least some, recognition. My posture, tone of voice, and thoughts (though internal, they are not private; thus in and through them God exposed my sinfulness) all betrayed my pride. Maybe not to all, but it really does not change my soul's standing before God if my students or volunteer staff are fooled.

It must sound strange for a sanctified Nazarene pastor to be talking about his sin. But it should not be. Truthfully, I believe that when we are sanctified, or, as we are being sanctified², confession becomes more and more a part of our lives. This is because as we mature in the faith our sin tends to become less visible. So we do not outgrow confession, but learn more and more how central it is to our sanctification. God uses it to draw deeper, more subtle, and more fundamental sin out of the shadowy recesses and into the purifying light. It is grace, by this means like a beautiful puss that pushes the splinter to the surface so that it can be shown for what it is and extracted.

Last night will stick with me. It was one of those moments that was consumed by what is real. There is nothing false about a convicted sinner, who often sins because he forgets how short and precious life truly is and from whence it comes, with ash on his forehead, marking his fellow penitents (one of whom happened to be his sister) with the cross and urging them to "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." So it will not fade into the past but will always be present as I move into the future.

¹I originally typed this word in the past tense. I guess my purification was not completed at the close of last night's service.

²They are the same thing. So really, this sentence is redundant. I emphasized the "are being" because that is part we Nazarenes tend to overlook or de-emphasize in our own spiritual journey.

"I Think I Got 'Em Harry!"

2006-02-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

So our Vice-President had a little mishap and shot a 78 year-old man. In the face.

Wow. This is fodder for so much comedy. I do not forsee "our Vice-President shot a man in the face" jokes getting unfunny any time soon. Unless the guy dies, but that does not seem likely. So, here are some of the good gunslinging VP jokes I've seen/heard during the last few days. Let's all take a minute to a month or so to laugh at our VP.

(The first bit from the Daily Show has also been posted by both Charlie and Eric, because it is that funny.)

From "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart"

Jon Stewart: "I'm joined now by our own vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst, Rob Corddry. Rob, obviously a very unfortunate situation. How is the vice president handling it?

Rob Corddry: "Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.

"And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face."

Jon Stewart: "But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak."

Jon Stewart: "That's horrible."

Rob Corddry: "Look, the mere fact that we're even talking about how the vice president drives up with his rich friends in cars to shoot farm-raised wingless quail-tards is letting the quail know 'how' we're hunting them. I'm sure right now those birds are laughing at us in that little 'covey' of theirs.

Jon Stewart: "I'm not sure birds can laugh, Rob."

Rob Corddry: "Well, whatever it is they do … coo .. they're cooing at us right now, Jon, because here we are talking openly about our plans to hunt them. Jig is up. Quails one, America zero.

Jon Stewart: "Okay, well, on a purely human level, is the vice president at least sorry?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, what difference does it make? The bullets are already in this man's face. Let's move forward across party lines as a people … to get him some sort of mask."

* * *
Jon Stewart: "Yes, as you've just heard, a near-tragedy over the weekend in south Texas. Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt at a political supporter's ranch. Making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting VP since Alexander Hamilton.

"Hamilton, of course, shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird.

* * *
The other player in the drama? Ranch owner and eyewitness Katharine Armstrong.

Katharine Armstrong: "We were shooting a covey of quail. The vice president and two others got out of the car to walk up the covey."

Jon Stewart: "What kind of hunting story begins with getting out of your car? As I sighted the great beast before us, my shaking hands could barely engage the parking brake. Slowly, I turned off the A/C and silenced my sub-woofers…"

* * *
Katharine Armstrong: "A bird flushed. The vice president took aim at the bird and shot and unfortunately, Mr. Whittington was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty well."

Jon Stewart: "Peppered. There you have it. Harry Whittington, seasoned to within an inch of his life.

* * *
Letterman: "Good news ladies and gentleman, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction … It's Dick Cheney."

* * *
"We can't get Bin Laden, but we nailed a 78-year-old attorney."

* * *
"The guy who got gunned down is a Republican lawyer and a big Republican donor and fortunately the buck shot was deflected by wads of laundered cash. So he's fine. He took a little in the wallet."

* * *
From "Cheney's Excuses," Monday night's Top 10 list on Letterman: "I thought the guy was trying to go gay cowboy on me."

* * *
Jimmy Kimmel: "It's part of the president's new Social Security plan. Once you hit 78, kablamo."

* * *
"Luckily, the guy he shot was wearing the body armor that never got shipped to the troops."

* * *
Leno: "Although it is beautiful here in California, the weather back East has been atrocious. There was so much snow in Washington, D.C. Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fat guy thinking it was a polar bear."

* * *
"When people found out he shot a lawyer his popularity is now at 92%"

* * *
"After he shot the guy, he screamed, 'Anyone else want to call domestic wire tapping illegal?' "

* * *
"Something I just found out today about the incident. Do you know that Dick Cheney tortured the guy for a half hour before he shot him?"

Some Wilde Quotes

2006-02-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

I would like to thank my friend Jarrod Taylor for suggesting that I begin to read Oscar Wilde. I have only skimmed a compilation of what Oxford considers to be his greatest works and done a short online search, but have already come across a number of great quotes, a testament to his genius. Anyone who has coined as many catch phrases and what have become almost cliches has some serious business going on upstairs. Here are a handful of my favorites so far. If you have some others, let me know. I'm all over this kind of junk.

"Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard, and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask.."

"...sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things...It
is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it,
and even then must bleed again, though not in pain."

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter."

"Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace."

"...every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and...therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day
to cry aloud on the housetop."

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

"Genius is born--not paid."

"Biography lends to death a new terror."

"Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."
(Italics mine.)

"We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

Children Obey Your Parents

2006-01-26T15:06:00.000-07:00

I am currently sitting at my desk at my second job (Ministry doesn't often pay the bills) and am about to go insane with boredom. Things are so slow here that my co-workers and I have spent the last five hours killing time on the internet. I would like to share with you a little treasure I found during this time. It's a poem. It's a really bad poem. I left all the spelling and grammar errors alone. They're part of the fun. Here it is. (Seriously, it's abysmal)

Jenny was so happy about the house they had found.
For once in her life it was on the right side of town.
She unpacked her things with such great ease.
As she watched her new curtains blow in breeze.

How wonderful it was to have her own room.
School would be starting, she'd have friends over soon.
There'd be sleep-overs, and parties; she was so happy
It's just the way she wanted her life to be.

On the first day of school, everything went great.
She made new friends and even got a date!
She thought, "I want to be popular and I'm going to be,
Because I just got a date with the star of the team!"

To be known in this school you had to have a clout,
And dating this guy would sure help her out.
There was only one problem stopping her fate.
Her parents had said she was too young to date.

"Well, I just won't tell them the entire truth.
They won't know the difference; what's there to lose?"
Jenny asked to stay with her friends that night.
Her parents frowned but said, "All right."

Excited, she got ready for the big event
But as she rushed around like she had no sense,
She began to feel guilty about all the lies,
But what's a pizza, a party, and moonlight ride?

Well, the pizza was good, and the party was great,
But the moonlight ride would have to wait.
For Jeff was half drunk by this time.
But he kissed her and said that he was just fine.

Then the room filled with smoke and Jeff took a puff.
Jenny couldn't believe he was smoking that stuff.
Now Jeff was ready to ride to the point
But only after he'd smoked another joint.

They jumped in the car for a moonlight ride,
Not thinking that he was too drunk to drive.
They finally made it to the point at last,
And Jeff started trying to make a pass.

A pass is not what jenny wanted at all
(and by a pass, I don't mean playing football).
"Perhaps my parents were right ... maybe I am too young.
Boy, how could I ever, ever be so dumb.

With all her might, she pushed Jeff say away:
"Please take me home, I don't want to stay."
Jeff cranked up the engine and floored the gas.
In a matter of seconds they were going too fast.

As Jeff drove on in a fit of wild anger,
Jenny knew that her life was in danger.
She begged and pleaded for him to slow down,
But he just got faster as they neared the town.

"Just let me go home! I'll confess that I lied.
I really went out for a moonlight ride."
Then all of a sudden, she saw a big flash.
"Oh God, Please help us! We're going to crash!"

She doesn't remember the force of the impact.
Just that everything all of a sudden went black.
She felt someone remove her from the twisted rubble,
And heard, " Call an ambulance! There kids are in trouble!"

Voices she heard.... A few words at best.
But she knew there were two cars involved in the wreck.
Then wondered to herself if Jeff was all right,
And if the people in the other car were alive.

She awoke in the hospital to faces so sad.
"You've been in a wreck and it looks pretty bad."
These voices echoed inside her head,
As they gently told her that Jeff was dead.

They said "Jenny, we've done all we can do.
But it looks as if we'll lose you too."
"But the people in the other car?" Jenny cried.
"We're sorry, Jenny, they also died."

Jenny prayed, "God, forgive me for what I've done
I only wanted to have just one night of fun."
"Tell those people's family, I've made their lives dim,
And wish I could return their families to them."

"Tell Mom and Dad I'm sorry I lied,
And that it's my fault so many have died.
Oh, nurse, won't you please tell them that for me?
The nurse just stood there — she never agreed.

But took Jenny's hand with tears in her eyes.
And a few moments later Jenny died.
A man asked the nurse, " Why didn't you do your best
To bid that girl her one last request?"

She looked at the man
with eyes so sad.
"Because the people in the other car
were her Mom and Dad."

I laughed out loud and gagged simultaneously upon reading the ending. I think I will share this with my youth group next Wednesday.

"So children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right -"

"Yeah, because it's the first commandment with a promise."

"Good. You know what that promise is?"

"What?"

"If you don't you will murder them and then die slowly."

"Oh."

"Now go in peace to serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

Cherishing The Moments That Are Absorbed By What Is Real

2006-01-20T16:42:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog. It's a profound documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a man who's desire to make peace with his own soul and find a place to belong led him to live with grizzly bears in Alaska for 13 summers. Why did he stop at the unlucky number 13? He didn't really have a choice. He definitely would have spent more summers there, but at the end of the 13th, one of the bears ate him.

What makes this film brilliant and so beautifully haunting is the honesty humanity with which it deals with such a difficult protagonist. Herzog does not begin to attempt to make Treadwell a black and white hero. The film shows his life to be a messy one. Treadwell ended up going insane, and Herzog does not try to pretty this up. Neither does he exploit it by turning him into a two dimensional crazy person for comic effect or added eerieness. Herzog doesn't even romanticize Treadwell's love for nature. Where in nature Treadwell claimed to have found love, perfection and oneness, Herzog, in a voice over of a close-up of a grizzly's face, confesses to seeing only "the overwhelming indifference of nature." (Which seems to be the interpretation supported by at least one of the bears whom Treadwell served for 13 summers.) What Herzog does is show a man going to extremes to try and find something worth living for.

Treadwell found it increasingly difficult to see anything real in another human. He could not find intimacy and belonging in the human world. His way of dealing with this was to sink into madness, and create in his mind a oneness with the grizzlies and their habitat that was not there.

Herzog does not demean Treadwell for this. He treats his search as what it is, tragic, beautiful, human, something we can all relate to and learn from, and, most important for Herzog, honest (though his solution was not - thus the tragic part). For Herzog the world is not unified in God, or love, or harmony, but chaos and violence, and he sympathizes with any person who looks honestly at this chaos and retreats into insanity.

Though I obviously do not share Herzog's worldview (I respect it as the most truthful one that does not know God) I was deeply touched by his film. It plunges deep into a troubled soul and offers no simplistic, cardboard answers, yet still left me with a deeper appreciation for life. I can relate to a world whose search for truth in others results only in consternation because it no longer knows how to look for or recognize the Imago Dei in another. I've been there. Truthfully, some of me still is (as long as we fight, parts of all of us are).

This film made me especially grateful for my fiancee. For the fact that I, unlike Treadwell, have someone with whom to share and live out the real, the self-sacrificing love and faithfulness of Jesus Christ. It made me appreciate the oneness that God is creating in us. It made me want to call and leave ridiculous messages on her voice mail so she can laugh at my expense. It made me cherish the moments we share that seem incredibly real. Like last summer when we sat together on the sofa and I held her in my arms and looked at the clock then closed my eyes and stuck my nose in her hair and just tried to really live in the last eight minutes we had left to celebrate our third anniversary. Those eight minutes are still real. Or the times we argue without the fear that our disagreements will lead to separation. Or the time I bore my soul to her and shared my deepest secret. It was a brutal moment. But it was honest, vulnerable, safe, and godly. It was not a happy moment. It was a real one.

Why is it that people like Treadwell are unable to find the oneness they seek in other people? It is not that people like my fiancee and I are better or know how to see what is real because of our own merit, but because what is real has found us. I hope more people like Timothy Treadwell are not left to escape into madness, but see that they too can be found by what is real.

Politically Correct language Is Indeed Political, But Far From Correct.

2006-01-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

In truth, all language is political. This is because when writing or conversing, there is more going on than the communication of whatever base information the words stand for. There are numerous different ways in which the same basic thing can be said. The words that the writer/speaker uses are specifically chosen, in part, because the writer/speaker is trying to communicate something about themselves. Their rhetoric reveals not only what group said person identifies or is attempting to identify with, but can also reveal how said person feels about whatever group may be their subject and/or whatever group they are addressing.

Example: I work with teens. Say I am at a youth camp and approach a group of boys who obviously like emo music very much to introduce myself.

If I say, "Hey guys, sweet hair. I like the way you shoot it to the right when it gets in your eyes too much (cocky smile). That was a Death Cab song you were playing there on your acoustic guitar right? (Wait for them to nod in silence) Sweet. Nice stickers on that guitar too, how they're all crooked and unbalanced. Especially that one. I'm glad you're doing your part to combat the Nazi message... I'm Wil, what are your names?" I reveal myself to be someone who fears becoming out of touch with age, nevertheless has become slightly out of touch and tries to combat this by keeping up with popular music trends and watching Napoleon Dynamite to learn the current acceptable way to say "cool," but who realizes this and hates it for it's shallowness and therefore tries to make himself feel like he's above it by slipping in some sarcasm. I also care, at least on a shallow level, for these teens, am open to their culture, and want to be accepted by them.

On the other hand, if I walk up to them and say, "Hey, I knew you punks were gonna be trouble. Lunch started fifteen minutes ago, why are you loiterin' around here? ...Who am I? You can call me Sir. Come on. Now! Don't just look at me like I got tinkle on my pants. And afterwards I got some clippers back in my cabin, I'll have the little lady cut that hair. Between that and those tight jeans you look like a sad, pretty little girl. Come on! Move! Maybe if your pants weren't so tight you could keep up. Shameful, showing all you got through your denim like that. Used to be the girls I had to get onto for not coverin' up what God gave 'em. Now it's you little boys too!" I reveal my ignorance of and/or dislike for teen culture and that I care little for these particular teens and whether or not I am accepted by them. In fact, I probably harbor something personal against all cool kids their age and will soon be the subject of creepy little government post cards that my new neighbors will receive whenever I move.

The examples are infinite, but the point was grasped long ago. The words chosen communicate much about the communicator and their position toward their subject and audience.

Admittedly, in a situation like this, the above judgments may not be accurate. Maybe the second guy does care. Maybe a lot. Maybe he does have a gruff but still innocent concern for decency. Maybe he's just having a bad day. Maybe he did just trickle in his drawers a little and at this moment he's self-conscious and embarrassed and his words came carelessly out of emotion. But when politically correct language is used, especially in writing and public discourse, it is not careless but intentional and calculated. Some of it (not all, but some) is so ridiculous that it would be virtually impossible for anyone to use it on accident (poor = economically disadvantaged?). The question begging to be asked is why the person using the PC language is doing so? The answer, more than employing it for the benefit of poor people and folks in wheelchairs, is to communicate something about themselves. And what they are telling us usually isn't true.

What they want to convey is that they are nice and care about these people. That they really are trying to make things better for them. Sounds sweet. But it's not. In reality politically correct language is almost always patronizing, lazy and selfish. It allows the person using it to feel like they have been a part of a real solution without requiring them to actually do anything. And those who supposedly benefit from the new moniker see right through this in a way that only the often-patronized can.

As David Foster Wallace (good writer, check him out) says in his essay Authority and American Usage:

I strongly doubt whether a guy who has four small kids and makes $12,000 a year feels more empowered or less ill-used by a society that carefully refers to him as 'economically disadvantaged' rather than 'poor.' If I were he, in fact, I'd probably find the Politically Correct English term insulting...(because)...like many forms of vogue usage Politically Correct English functions primarily to signal and congratulate certain virtues in the speaker - scrupulous egalitarianism, concern for the dignity of all people, sophistication about the political implications of language - and so serves the self-regarding interests of the PC far more than it serves any of the persons or groups named.

The language might be nice, but nice is shallow. Nice is not necessarily concerned for what is actually good. In fact, when it is used to pacify those suffering and simultaneously cloak inaction, nice is downright evil.

What does all this mean then for me, as a Christian? Well, I use politically correct language (as you can tell by the absence of gender specific pronouns in the above unless I am referring to a specifically named person). In some ways it is important. The way in which we talk about things influences the way we think about them,* but it is not enough to just change the way we think about those who suffer. We need to change the way we act towards them. Let's quit patronizing them with nice titles so we can feel good about ourselves and actually do something for them. The love of God cannot be separated from the love of our brothers and sisters. And I am guilty of this.

So what am I going to do? Or am I just preaching? Doing exactly what I am condemning and thinking that simply writing this is enough? I hope not. And if I do not let you know in a later blog how I am, in some way or another, trying to actually do something, you have the right and responsibility to reply to this blog and call me a self-righteous, patronizing hypocrite.

*Which is exactly why I refuse to replace "poor" with "economically disadvantaged." Poor should be a terrible word, but not to insult the poor. It should stir something in their brothers and sisters that moves them to loving action. "Economically disadvantaged" makes poverty sound too much like a permanent spinal chord injury or something. Something unfortunate, but something that the average person can do nothing about. So instead of helping we "commiserate" from a distance and leave the work of aiding our so called "commiserator" to some specialist.

Requiem

2005-12-21T20:06:00.000-07:00

Last month I started this blog with the story of Amy's grandmother. At the time it seemed that she would not live more than a few days, but I guess everyone underestimated the woman. She held death off for another month (making her total time spent in a coma just over four years), but eventually, as we all will, lost the battle with mortality. Today was her funeral.

There is no situation like a funeral to make us realize how dependent we are on God for life and hope. We can push death out of our minds for years at a time, but eventually we will come face to face with it, and at that moment we must all acknowledge that we are powerless to overcome death on our own. For Christians though, we have the hope and assurance that death has indeed been overcome and that we ourselves may participate in the resurrection of the dead. God did not leave Christ in the tomb, and he has promised not to leave us there either.

There is one moment from today that I already know has been permanently burned into my memory. It was during the viewing, while I was contemplating the bodily resurrection that Scripture promises, and I saw Amy's grandmother draw breath, rise, and leave her coffin behind. (Another is any moment that involved the presiding Priest, Father O'Brian. This man's personality was straight comedy. In one sense it was a relief. He unintentionally elicited a laugh from even the saddest in attendance. In another it was kind of disappointing because I find the Catholic memorial liturgy extremely significant and beautiful, but this was all eclipsed by Father O'Brien's demeanor. He would best, but not quite, be described as Stuart Smalley on Prozac after a thousand hours of sensitivity training reading a bedtime story to a four-year-old. At one point, in this voice, he abruptly stopped everything, sustained a histrionic silent pause, then reminded all attending to "Breathe...Just breathe.")

As expected, the most uncertainty surrounds Amy's grandfather. He has spent six to eight hours of every day for the last four years caring for his bedridden, semi-conscious wife. Now he does not know what to do with himself. He said today, "The last four years I've lived knowing that at any minute the call could come. Now I live knowing that it has come."

I can only imagine what that must be like. There are many people attending to his needs, occupying the vast amounts of free time that threaten him, feeding him, listening and talking to him...but if you do not mind, please pray for him. His name is Bob Long.

I recently bought Mozart's Requiem. That was a nice, brusque, post-modern shift in topic huh? Don't worry anyone reading this with other than post-modern tastes (is anyone reading this?); hopefully this will tie back into the overarching line of thought before you give up on coherence and move on to another website.

If you do not know, a requiem is a mass or composition for the dead (Already getting back on track). Now for most today a service or prayer for the dead any time after the funeral seems outdated and superstitious (And I would bet that even the prayers offered during most funerals asking God to recieve the deceased into his kingdom are much more for the comfort of those still living than they are for the dead loved one). And I admit that in some ways I fall into this group, but this CD is beautiful, moody and haunting. No matter what else I pop into my CD player I cannot escape it. So I gave up trying to escape it and started thinking about Christian prayer for the dead (which reaches back into our tradition a great deal).

I soon remembered a time last spring when I was sitting in Christian Worship class. It was one of those rare moments when my attention was not riveted on the words of Dr. John Wright (John, if you happen to be reading this, I promise those moments were rare...or at least intermittent). My attention was quickly recovered though when he said, "...and that is why medieval Christians had no problem praying for the dead." But it was too late, and I thought, "Dang. That sounded interesting. I wish I had been paying attention."

So I went back and re-read the book John was teaching from, Torture and Eucharist by William Cavanaugh, and I think I found the passage that led to the discussion that day. In chapter five Cavanaugh discusses a Christian conception of time, and how it has been lost over the last couple hundred years. He says on page 222:

The medieval Christian conception (of time) is marked by..."Messianic time," that is, the simultaneity of past and future in the present. Representations of biblical figures in medieval dress strike the modern observer as odd, but medieval Christians did not imagine they were separated from the past (or the future) by a wide gulf of ever-advancing time. The biblical figures were "contemporaries," connected to the present through divine providence.

In short, he says that the difference is that after the enlightenment time began to be understood according to human experience and reason. To a human, who only experiences time as one confined by it, time seems to be like a chain that is linked horizontally by cause and effect. To a Christian, on the other hand, time is understood in God, who is not limited by time, but is its Master. In God, Christians understood events in history not as vastly separated by horizontal links, but close and even overlapping because of their vertical links to God. That is why Christ's death is still effective and was able to reach back to the fall, and why Christians have a real hope in the Second Coming of Christ. It has already happened, thought we have yet to experience it first hand.

Now to graft this little excursus fully back into the original line of thought. I have already asked you to pray for her grandfather, and even though I may not completely understand how it can do any good (because I still exist as one within the confines of time), and if it does not offend your enlightened, rationalistic sensibilities too much, please pray for her grandmother as well. Pray that she would know God's mercy and partake in his salvation. Perhaps God honors our prayers before we even pray them, yet still wants us to offer them. Her name is Patricia Long.

Dog

2005-12-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

So I just got a dog. I still have not decided on a name. It is a toss up between Cheyenne and Layla. What do you guys think?

If you want to see more of her, click here.

No Worship on Christmas?

2005-12-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

I want to continually guard against my natural tendency to make every post on this site a rant. Though quite often warranted, I do not think they do as much good as I wish they did. So let me begin with something positive.

No. Something better than that. Let me begin with some grace.

After all, we are in the season of Advent, and where is grace seen more clearly than in the story of God becoming man to reconcile his beloved yet rebellious creation to himself? Nowhere. Grace animates the story and uses it to give us a tender hug or a punch to the gut (depending on our need). This is a season of joy and hope, because in it we look to the coming of the Christ in history, celebrate the way he is faithful in continuing to come to us today, and anticipate his coming again.

So think on this, and for now, be happy and joyful. (No this sentence is not redundant. It's nuanced.)

Are you both? Good.

Enjoy it for a moment...

Now...can I move into the next portion of this post and kill some of your happiness while sustaining your joy? I hope to do both.

If it were not for God's action in the incarnation (Christ's becoming man) we would not worship as we do. This is obvious. But it does us good to repeatedly think about what this means. Without Christmas we would not know God's fullness as seen in Christ. We would not know reconciliation with God through his faithfulness and blood. We would not be able to gather together with all people, regardless of their nationality, personal history or economic standing, to worship the Creator of us all.

We would know neither peace nor love.

We would not know beauty or grace.

We would not be able to offer ourselves in sacrificial worship to the One whom we were created to worship and in whom we find our true identity.

We would have no hope.

What is more important to a Christian than this?

Leisure time, apparently.

Several churches in the Phoenix area, and, most likely, a few churches in whatever area you live in are doing the same thing (unless you live in the Vatican or an "underdeveloped" country or a country where Christians are persecuted or...heck, pretty much if you live in America or someplace like it), have cancelled their Sunday morning worship services this year because it falls on Christmas day. This makes about as much sense as Stallone making Rocky VI.

Christmas is one of the highest Christian holidays. We should be gathering in our local churches for worship on Christmas no matter what day of the week it happens to fall on. This is like canceling worship on Easter.

"But it's inconvenient and takes away from holiday time with my family. I only get so much time off of work to relax you know."

Good point. I can relate to how terrible it is to be inconvenienced.

Oh, but wait. It was probably pretty inconvenient for Christ to leave his Father, shed his glory and take a human body, and hang from a cross for the very people who put him there. So strike that. After further reflection I have decided that that is not such a good point after all and that I cannot (or rather choose not to) relate.

Besides, it is not even a point that should have to be made. We should be flocking to worship joyously and willingly. Everything that is not worship should be seen as inconvenient and part of our old, worldly lives. Lives that we have left behind.

Further, on the subject of time with our families, every believer is now part of the same family (Matthew 10:37-38; 12:48-49). Do not neglect this heavenly family that we get to fellowship with here on earth. If you want to have some time with your immediate, earthly family (which is a good thing to have, do not get me wrong), there are how many hours left on Christmas after noon dismissal? Take that time to better explain what you are celebrating on Christmas to your children after they have ravished their presents (and no, what you are celebrating is not their thankfulness to you and appreciation for all the money you spent on them). As good as that might seem, we are, in fact, reveling in salvation. Pure and mind blowing.

What is happening here is so terrible because it is more of a threat than all the politically correct language and legislation working to make everyone call this by the non-religion specific term "holidays." Or everyone trying to take "Christ" out of Christmas. They may not have to anymore. We might do it for them.

This is Christians celebrating a different Christmas. A therapeutic, commercial Christmas that gives Toys 'r Us and Microsoft more to celebrate about than it gives to Christians. Ask Bill O'Reilley. (Thanks to Eric, I believe, who brought that clip to my attention somewhere or other.)

This is true Christmas: the gospel. Jesus has come and comes now and is coming again. Let us live this joy. Not cancel it.

If your church has cancelled worship on Christmas, do not go and berate your leadership. Set an example of faithfulness. Find a place to worship. My Church's doors will thankfully, and with thankfulness, be opened.

Anesthesia

2005-11-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday started out well. I got a call late Friday telling me that my Xbox 360 was ready and waiting at my local EB Games store. A nice surprise, considering I had resigned myself to waiting at least another two weeks since I was one of the irresponsible people who did not pay for theirs until October. Without a hint of complaint I asked for an explanation. It seems that someone with better things to do with a couple hundred dollars who was on the list for the first shipment cancelled their order and my name got bumped up. So Saturday, right at 10 am, when the store opens, I was on my way to pick up hours upon hours worth of diversion. Though soon, my heart and mind, that were already numbed by the anticipated presence of the Xbox 360, would be sensitized by something bigger and upsetting happening in the world around me.

To get to my EB Games store I drive by a Home Depot. It is not uncommon to see a dozen or more Hispanic men standing in the parking lot outside this particular Home Depot waiting for someone to pick them up and give them a job for a day or two, pay them under the table, drop them back off, and then ignore them the next time when they only stop by for some masking tape or wood glue.

Saturday was different though.

As I approached, I noticed that the crowd was four or five times larger than usual and, curiously, 90% white. Then I remembered the three page flyer that had been put on the windshield of my car a few days earlier by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps calling for a protest of this day labor site. The opening paragraph of this flyer read:

Are you tired of illegal aliens taking jobs away from American citizens? Are you tired of hearing about our schools and hospitals being overrun and underfunded due to illegal aliens tying up our system? Does it make you sick to your stomach to see American companies hiring illegal aliens? Can't get to the border to stand a post but want to do something in your own community? This is your calling...

The flyer also encouraged participants to bring their own homemade signs with slogans like "Viva la Migra." I kid you not. That was an actual suggestion. And if you do not find that small and degrading then you probably should not read the rest of this post.

As I slowed the car to take in as much of the scene in as I could, I tried to figure out why I was so troubled by it all. Then I began to think about how the second greatest commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself, without question, still extends to illegal aliens, and how I could see no love in the protester's actions.

God's love is not restricted by borders or international law, even if the person or persons in question are lawbreakers. (Remember the thief on the cross?) As Christians we cannot be content to love these people only on short-term missions trips, or by shipping our old and unwanted clothing to them in boxes. When they are here it is our chance to love them face to face on our homeland. To Christians it is more of an opportunity than a threat.

I do not pretend to know how to handle this situation on the level of national policy (but here is someone, not that I agree with everything they say, who seems to at least be trying to do so in a much more tender way http://www.humanebordersblogged.blogspot.com). In fact, it is funny to me how every time I bring something like this up most of my Christian friends assume that I am evaluating things from the sphere of national politics. I am not. I am just trying to figure out what it means for us to act like Christians in every part of life. While I do not know how to fix the problem through our government, it seems to me that there must be a better way to go about this than by dumping all of the blame for our problems on the poor who are simply seeking a better life. Do we have to demonize them and set ourselves physically against them by protesting their presence to their face? I wonder how the American flags, which we are told stand for liberty and opportunity, that were being waved by the protesters looked to the immigrants standing on the other side of the lines.

Why do we think that things will be so much better for us if we keep the poor at a safe distance? One of the signs held by a gruff, grey bearded protester read, "Mr. President, they did not die for open borders," and had pictures of fallen soldiers' helmets hanging lopsided from rifle butts. Funny how we are willing to sacrifice the lives of American soldiers to liberate Iraq and create and jump-start their new economy, but not sacrifice here on our own turf for Mexican immigrants. I guess Mexico will just have to wait its turn for us to come and fix them.

I am not saying I expect the United States to open its borders. I am not even saying that I think that would be practical. I am saying that as Christians we are not called to be practical but to live as Christ lived. And if we were to do that our love and compassion would not be limited by borders or frightened by the invasion of what we perceive to be "our space." (Because we know that it all belongs to God anyway.)

Why is it so hard for us to see people whose worldly citizenship rests in another country as fellow human beings, created and loved by the same God that created and loves everyone in like measure, when they are labeled "illegals?"

Yes, it is sad if an American suffers or dies because our healthcare system is tied up by illegal aliens. But it is just as sad if the alien is turned away and suffers or dies so that an American citizen can receive treatment. I do not hold any American life to be worth more than the life of even the poorest Mexican. Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that all of these problems named by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps find their source in illegal immigrants anyway. I think it much more likely to find the source in a much more wide-spread and pernicious problem, human greed and selfishness. Perhaps if some of the school districts with Taco Bells and Pizza Huts in their cafeterias and double-decker tour buses carting around their clubs and sports teams were to share with the poorer districts that are "overrun and underfunded due to illegal aliens" we could better handle the strain, help educate them, and give them hope for a better future.

It makes me sick to my stomach to think that we would rather send these people away to live in abject poverty (do we really believe that anyone would leave a comfortable life, anywhere near comparable to our middle-class existence, to work as an illegal day laborer?), rather than to sacrifice for them. It makes me sick to think of our healthcare system (as corrupt and filthy rich as it is in some areas) sending the poor away to receive terrible care, if any at all, in Mexico. This is selfishness on a wide-spread, corporate level. A sin that undoubtedly both stems from and trickles down to invade individual hearts.

I thought all this. Then, with my windows up, I drove on to get my Xbox 360.

An Open Letter to the Internet

2005-11-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Internet,

Why must you continually make it so difficult for me to starve the passive-aggressive high school bully still living inside of me by tossing me tasty morsels such as this?

http://www.vaccc.com/home.html

Sincerely,
Wilson Ryland

Fear Mongering

2005-11-16T15:18:00.000-07:00

The fear machine is out of control. Those who created it (or at least think they did, because fear is, at its source, a byproduct of sin, which pre-dates the modern media by a little bit) now can only hope to exploit its effects while narrowly escaping being consumed by fear themselves. The news creates more anxiety than all the horror and suspense films we watch combined, because, unlike the villains on screen, these may actually exit the realm of television and mangle our bodies, steal our purses or, worst of all it would seem, threaten our "freedom."

This scares us, and we eat it up. Tell us about terror. After all, who wants to wake up to the flash of a weapon of mass destruction with their flesh peeling off their bones like layers of dried glue from the hands of a kindergartner? Tell us about war, for war makes us safe. Right?

The public cannot get enough bad news, and it seems there is more than enough bad news for the media to report.

I just went to the bank to deposit a couple of checks. During the five minutes I spent there I learned three things from the plasma televisions mounted on the wall behind the tellers.

1) A fourteen-year-old girl is considered a victim, not a suspect, in the murder of both her parents. Her eighteen-year-old boyfriend did it.
2) The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (V.H.E.M.T.) is a legitimate movement (to steal their own terrible pun, they are a vehement movement) that wants humans to stop breeding so as to eventually die out and allow earth to heal itself. Check out their website at http://www.vhemt.org. It's actually rather interesting. They believe in abortion, but "only when someone is pregnant." Ha ha. And they portray a phantom-like human form as a future companion to a dinosaur and a dodo. It is nice to finally see a human extinction movement with a sense of humor.
3) A fifteen year-old was abducted and sold as a prostitute over the internet for several weeks before the police found her.

I do not mean to downplay the severity of any of these stories. They (at least the first and third) are terrible, and I pray that the victims will find hope and healing in Christ, but this blog is not about how bad the world has gotten. You hear that enough. Even at the bank. Rather, this is a call that echoes the words of Christ. Christians, do not be afraid.

The world and the rulers of this age want us to live in fear, but we must not, for Christ has overcome the world. Not only did Christ overcome the world, but he also created a space for us to live free from its death and tyranny (even though we remain in the midst of the world). This space is the Church, and no one, not even terrorists, can threaten the freedom we have in Christ. Christ is the ruler of this space. He is our King. All authority and power belong to him. This statement is simple enough, and is one that most Christians would immediately agree with. What seems to be difficult is discerning how this plays out in our lives.

The problem is that when we allow fear to rule we grant certain authority that belongs only to God, to those who have no right to that authority. Christ's kingdom is not limited to some abstract, "spiritual" realm. It is not simply a kingdom comprised of souls. It certainly does care deeply for our souls, but it extends to our physical bodies as well. Christ is ruler of all and Christ cares about human bodies.

So, what does this mean for us today? A lot. One application the Church has not been afraid to speak in authority about is sexual purity. Christians, guard your carnal treasure. But for an application that is often avoided (because talking about politics in many churches can be as awkward and frightening as trying to converse with your parents about your carnal treasure) let's return to the news media and the controversy over torture.

Sen. John McCain (R - Arizona) has sponsored a bill containing amendments that would ban torture by U.S. forces. Vice-President Dick Cheney has made several attempts to exempt the CIA from McCain's bill and said at the outset of our new war on terror that "A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies...so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective," (Italics mine) and, "we have to work...the dark side, if you will."

Is terror wrong? Yes. Are their terrorist actions evil? Without a doubt. Should Christians be concerned with terror? Again, yes. But stories of secret CIA prisons around the world, from which persons permanently disappear, in which persons are tortured and denied habeas corpus, and America's refusal to register detainees in foreign prisons with the Red Cross etc., should also concern us. Terror can be scary, but we must not allow fear to cause us to approve of torture, nor to turn our head the other way when it happens.

This is not meant to cause dissention. This is not to side with or criticize any one political party. This is just an attempt to hold everything up against the gospel, and thus to show ungodliness for what it is, wherever it may be found. This is just me trying to live out the call of Jesus Christ in every aspect of my life.

If one of our own brothers or sisters in Christ is found in sin we are to hold them accountable. Why then do we hesitate to call sin "sin" when it is found in a political party or politician we happen to side with? Are we that afraid of being called unpatriotic? Christians should be a voice for Christ, not what we perceive to be the nearest thing. We represent truth, what is best, not next to best, and the best thing out there should be (and, I would say is, though she has her shortcomings) the Church of Jesus Christ, not the Republican nor the Democratic party.

If we allow fear to rule (whether it be fear for ourselves, fear for others, or, most likely, fear for both) then Christ is de-throned. This then leads us to give our assent to actions that are intended to guard us from that which we fear (terror) but do not line up with the life of Christ (torture). Evil should be engaged, but as Christians we must not sink to fighting evil with evil.

A Truly Broken Place

2005-11-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."
- Ernest Hemingway in ‘A Farewell to Arms’

I have been fighting inertia in getting my blog up and running, but today Amy (my fiancée) provided the push needed to set me in motion when she said something to me that was too beautiful not to share and that epitomizes what I want this thing to be about. Before I get to that though you need some back-story.

Amy’s grandparents had their lives radically altered four years ago due to medical malpractice. Her grandmother was given a shot that many people are brutally allergic to. Standard procedure is to watch a person for fifteen minutes after the shot is administered, that way, if they do turn out to be allergic to the medicine, an antidote can be easily administered and thus save a lot of people a lot of trouble. Amy’s grandmother was left alone in a room with the door closed for forty-five minutes after she was given the shot. She turned out to be one of the not too infrequent ones who are allergic to the medicine. She has been in a coma for the last four years.

Amy’s grandfather was a hard man. It has been amazing to witness the transformation in him as taking care of his wife has become his life. To see the harshness turn to tenderness. The self-centeredness into concern for another. This has been the sweet in this, the incredibly bittersweet.

Now, forty-seven months after this initially happened, it looks as though Amy’s grandmother will not live through this week. The family is gathering, preparations are being made, and Amy’s grandfather is beginning to wonder what his life will become when he no longer has someone to take care of.

Now to what Amy said to me today. She said, “I don’t even know if my grandmother can think in the way we understand thinking to be, but I wonder if she can look back on the last four years of her life and say, ‘I have lived a good last four years.’”

I have to admit that the last few times I went with Amy to visit her grandmother and saw here there with here eyes wandering all over the room or rolled back up into her head and machine tubes jutting out of her as she frequently hacked and choked on the phlegm her body produced to attack the plastic foreign object stuck in her throat, I wondered, “What kind of a life is this?” Now I see that perhaps it was a beautiful one.

In her brokenness she helped bring about some wonderful and miraculous changes in the life of her husband. She, in a very real way, gave him a new life. One that a shallow glance might see as heartbreaking, but one that below the terrible surface is real and brilliant. Her recent life was amazing and virtuous because it was completely lived for the good of another, and lead the other to live in the same way. Is that not as Christ lived? Was Christ’s life not both beautiful and heartbreaking?

It is unsure what Amy’s grandfather’s life will become once his wife is gone. Not even he knows what he will do. But what is certain is that God will bring life and strength out of the brokenness that will come with her death just as he did in the last broken place of their lives.

In Broken Places

2005-11-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

Working on it...