A Journey and a Hiatus

I will be getting married today, and I will be deploying until sometime in the spring. I will not be making regular posts to this blog for some time.

You know those pregnant moments in life? Goodbyes at the airport where there's just a little too much time for uneasy silence and smalltalk before they call boarding on the flight. The mornings before afternoon weddings where you're excited for the event but not sure what to do with yourself. These meaningful moments where there is a heavy and palpable sense that something should be said or expressed, tears should be shed, memories relived, promises made in earnest, but we hesitate.

I have a sobering thought that maybe a lot people hesitate and don't say what they want to say when the moment is right, and the moment passes. That life begins to chronicle a series of uncomfortable silences where everyone there is thinking the same thing. That we're familiar with an expected script of what life should look like but sometimes don't actually know how to live. I don't want to live life that way, as a series of expectant, tentative moments. If you want to hug someone, kiss someone, love someone, tell someone something, you've got to do it.

I'll catch you all (I don't actually know who reads this thing) in six or so months.

Inerrancy and Bad Metaphors

"Inerrancy" is a term I have been prone to throw around casually with regard to the Bible. Most people with a passing familiarity with Christian belief take it as standard doctrine that the Bible is inerrant, or at least infallible. Inerrant states that the Bible is free from all errors or contradictions and is true in every aspect, spiritual and historical, while infallible is a more limited understanding that the Bible is true in spiritual and practical matters with the possibility for minor contradictions as a historical account.

I'd always approached discussions with biblical inerrancy as one of those standard Christian assumptions. If you're a Christian, let's agree that we both assume the Bible is true and therefore use it as a benchmark for any other conclusions or inferences we reach. If you're not a believer, then for the sake of this conversation, we'll treat the Bible as a useful historical and cultural text and exclude biblical inerrancy from our list of givens.

The idea of biblical inerrancy has only recently come to the forefront of theological discussion. Before modernism and postmodernism pushed the reader to consider the source and author's perspective for a written text, most people wouldn't think to call the Bible inerrant because it was assumed to be so. But now we are trained to read between the lines, put things in context, research amplifying information, ask who the author is and what his motivation might have been.

So I was sitting in bible study one day and we were considering one of King David's psalms. And we were running into a wall with one of the psalm's phrases; I'm not sure which, but for "a man after God's own heart," King David says a lot of angsty, emo things. So I asked, do we have to take everything in the psalms to be true?

Some girl: What do you mean, Matt? Don't you believe the Bible is true?

Well, sure I do, I said. I take it as historically preserved and accurate, and I take it as moral and spiritual truth as well.

Then you have to take the psalms as truth too.

What I'm saying is, even if the Bible is historically accurate and spiritually true, there are things said in the Bible that we don't take as truth. "Am I my brother's keeper?" for example. So here, included in the Bible, is a collection of poetry and songs written by a King of Israel. Good stuff, to be sure, but infallible?

The girl didn't understand my question, which might be just as well for reasons I'll bring up in a few paragraphs.

I recounted this story with another friend, my friend who's studying to become a pastor, and he shared his perspective. He said he didn't like to say anything about the Bible that the Bible doesn't claim about itself. This practice seems wise, since Proverbs 30 (and Matthew 5) warns against adding to Scripture. And my friend said that the strongest statement the Bible makes about itself is that it is useful:

"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." -- 2 Timothy 3:16

(On a related note, it's clear from 2 Peter 3:15-16 that Peter at least considered Paul's epistles to be in the category of Scripture.)

The perceived danger with disavowing biblical inerrancy is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If the Bible is possibly flawed, then everything we thought was true tumbles into a whirling chaotic mess of doubt, and what do we base our faith on? Jesus Himself says (Uh oh! Did He actually say it?) that we are to follow His words as if we were building a house on a solid foundation.

My friend and I agreed that we generally believe in Biblical infallibility and probably inerrancy. The logic "God is perfect, the Bible is God's book, therefore the Bible is perfect" is not a watertight syllogism, but it's certainly tenable. Maybe there is no statement in the Bible that claims its own inerrancy, but there are still very good arguments based on archeological consistency, textual preservation, and the personal and historical work of the Holy Spirit that would give excellent bases to take the Bible as a book of truth, and moreover, truth that transcends any other source of truth out there in the canon of things-written-down. If people want to go on believing and telling each other that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, I don't take it as a bad thing because in all honesty, I'm still part of that camp, even if I might start to avoid saying it explicitly. And sometimes if you don't throw that card down on the table right away, you'll interact better with the other players at the poker table, and who knows, even learn a thing or two yourself.

While the poker metaphor is still hot, there's a definite wild card here, and that's the omnipresent Biblical phrase "w(W)ord of God." It's a definite player because it shows up everywhere in the Bible and there are so many significant things said about the "w(W)ord of God." John 1 ascribes that title to Jesus and His incarnation, but is that a universal application of the term? Consider as an example Psalm 30:4-5:

"Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands?
Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and the name of his son?
Tell me if you know!
Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him."

It would be speculative to delve into this discussion without more advanced etymological scholarship. I'm pretty sure I need to either find or become a Greek and Hebrew scholar before I can really say anything intelligent about the matter.

I've told you that my friend Peter thinks the first eleven chapters of Genesis are parabolic in nature. And my friend Orestes interprets the book of Job as fabular. Clearly, Scripture is not something to take with blanket literalism, not if we respect it, but a dynamic entity with which we as Christians will have to wrestle. You know the great thing about wrestling with something? You have to get up close and personal with it.

Psalm 102

It's been a while since I considered a psalm. For some time, I've felt pretty distant from God emotionally, so the "hide not thou thy face from me" aspect drew me to the 102nd psalm. Here begins the commentary.


1 Hear my prayer, O LORD;
let my cry for help come to you.

The most sound way to read the diction is that the second clause augments the first; that is, the psalmist pleads for the prayer to come through to the Lord's attention. Alternatively, I like to think it could also be him asking that his cries for help be directed to the Lord, as opposed to some other false earthly source of hope or aid. It's a common failing to look to false doctrines or flawed humans when we should be looking to God; therefore, his prayer is appropriate.

2 Do not hide your face from me
when I am in distress.
Turn your ear to me;
when I call, answer me quickly.

3 For my days vanish like smoke;
my bones burn like glowing embers.

More than a time of dire trouble, I've recently been concerned with the temporal nature of life. How multiple days seem to pass quickly, uneventfully, without clear meaning, irrevocably. It's a distressing thought, well expressed by the line "my days vanish like smoke." It's not only times of tribulation, but also times of stagnancy, where it is well to ask God to enter into our lives.

4 My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
I forget to eat my food.

5 Because of my loud groaning
I am reduced to skin and bones.

6 I am like a desert owl,
like an owl among the ruins.

7 I lie awake; I have become
like a bird alone on a roof.

Again, I'd posit that we wither and atrophy not only at the presence of suffering and persecution, but also in the absence of a vibrant and dynamic relationship with the God who is our only source of life and vitality. Food and sleep lose significance and life loses color.

8 All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who rail against me use my name as a curse.

9 For I eat ashes as my food
and mingle my drink with tears

10 because of your great wrath,
for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.

11 My days are like the evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.

Here we enter into the question of whether the psalmist's sentiment, that the Lord has wrathfully thrown him aside, is theologically viable or not. I once got into an argument in Bible Study where one girl couldn't understand what I was asking: just because we accept the Bible and the Psalms therein to be true books, does that necessarily make the psalms themselves infallible expressions of truth?

12 But you, O LORD, sit enthroned forever;
your renown endures through all generations.

13 You will arise and have compassion on Zion,
for it is time to show favor to her;
the appointed time has come.

14 For her stones are dear to your servants;
her very dust moves them to pity.

15 The nations will fear the name of the LORD,
all the kings of the earth will revere your glory.

Recently, I was reflecting on the whole emphasis on God's glory and fame, and how big of a deal His reputation seems to be. I think a lot of the questions we have about the matter stem from the more self-centered cause that we want to be ourselves recognized too. Doubters will ask, why is God so concerned with His own glory? If He were so great, wouldn't His reputation be pretty immaterial to Him? And the answer that I find reasonable is that in a hierarchical paradigm where God is all-that omnipotent and expansive and awesome, the natural response of subordinate creation would be awe and worship. It just makes sense. Therefore any less of a response, any more casual or less reverent, is inappropriate and out of place, reflective of something broken in the relationship.

16 For the LORD will rebuild Zion
and appear in his glory.

17 He will respond to the prayer of the destitute;
he will not despise their plea.

18 Let this be written for a future generation,
that a people not yet created may praise the LORD :

19 "The LORD looked down from his sanctuary on high,
from heaven he viewed the earth,

20 to hear the groans of the prisoners
and release those condemned to death."

21 So the name of the LORD will be declared in Zion
and his praise in Jerusalem

22 when the peoples and the kingdoms
assemble to worship the LORD.

It's a pretty powerful idea that future generations not yet created would praise the Lord because of what their predecessors wrote down about Him.

23 In the course of my life, he broke my strength;
he cut short my days.

24 So I said:
"Do not take me away, O my God, in the midst of my days;
your years go on through all generations.

The author seems to be reminding the Lord of his own mortality. Other question: if the author's life is so tiresome and ill-begotten, why does he ask for more years? A few possibilities come to mind: certain aspects of our God-given lives are more advantageous to live out and experience than the glories of heaven, or the author has some purpose or work he still wants to finish, or the author is fallible and is expressing a misguided desire to stay on earth and defer his reunion with eternity.

25 In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.

26 They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
and they will be discarded.

People probably read verses like the ones above and think, oh, it means that God lasts forever and has an eternal nature, but I suspect few people have thought about the heavens, the stars and galaxies and nebulae billions of years old, being discarded and changed like used garments. We can't even fathom how crazy ancient certain celestial phenomena are in comparison to how long we've existed, much less the timelessness that the psalmist ascribes to God by comparison.

27 But you remain the same,
and your years will never end.

28 The children of your servants will live in your presence;
their descendants will be established before you."

Do we have that same communal and multi-generational attitude about faith? When I think of my faith with the Lord, do I think of myself and my ministry, or do I aspire to a long-lasting vision of thousands of descendants enjoying the fruits of a tree I labored to plant right now? God sees His work on a large scale, and we would understand Him better if we endeavored to adopt that mindset as well.

Hypocrisy

is the one word that almost always comes to conversation when people mention why they disdain or rejected the church. The mention of the word implies that there was once a genuine interest in what the church was centered around: Christ, His mission of love, and our resultant mission of love; but when stark disparities arose between the "talk" and the "walk," people were turned off and walked.

My friend Joe mentioned this experience last night at dinner, remarking that he had always been expecting a church to be passionate and proactive about going out and doing something good, vice showing up once a week and checking off their good deed for the day. It's an almost archetypal commentary, albeit with many singular exceptions.

Hypocrisy is, at its most distilled definition, saying one thing and doing another. The fact that the church is errant, that its members are sinful, does not alone make it hypocritical: we espouse a doctrine that claims that man is depraved and sinful and that our sinful nature is everything absolutely wrong in the world. Our story is a story about Christ's love, not our own. In fact, it's a story of the redemption of our fallen nature through no action of our own. If we sin, we are simply being consistent.

But we also preach a doctrine of love and redemption, and if people see us as hypocritical, it's because they expect that love is transformational. That if we as Christians really encountered and believed in this amazing, divine love that we claim to experience, on a daily basis, we would be different people altogether.

The broad fact that so many outsiders see Christians as hypocritical means that there could be a universal expectation or understanding that true love transforms people into their better selves, and if you believe in good creation, into who they were meant to be. In this age of deconstruction and relativity, I think that a universal assumption like that is remarkable.

In this discourse, I sort of bastardized a lot of significant parts of our theology. The Bible does speak to Christians walking by the guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead transformed and perfected lives of righteousness and love. It does espouse a definite morality for the adherence of its followers. It doesn't say we can get away with murder because we are fallen, but that we are through Christ "a new creation." But the point still stands: people expect the love we talk about to be life-changing and epic. People are interested in the idea of life-changing love. Aren't we supposed to have the ultimate answer for that? If there's hypocrisy anywhere, there it is.

RAOK

Since I graduated college and moved three times in the course of about a year, it's been challenging to find solid Christian fellowship and community. You find a church or a bible study or community group, and most of the regulars already have their preset social circles. They're not trying to be exclusive: it's just human nature.

Here in this particular phase of my career, I'm a hard guy to get to know because of I'm on 12 hour days, rotating shift-work. In other words, I basically cannot attend or commit to anything regularly because I might be starting my day at 4 am or 4pm, who knows. The mercurial schedule makes it so that I can attend church maybe once or twice a month and bible study with about the same frequency.

My friend Nathan happens to be my friend, not because it was easy or convenient for him, but because he makes it a priority and an intention to be my friend. When I first met up with him about five months ago, he said he really just likes hanging out with me and wanted to be my friend. Nathan is a newlywed, which means he has extra incentive to stay in the house, especially at odd hours of the night. But he's chosen to make room in his schedule for me, often last-minute or at unconventional times of day, purely because he values our relationship.

That's the thing that I'll remember most about Nathan. Not his earthy wisdom, not his Christ-centered ethos, not his sense of humor, not his insight, although all those things are certainly there, but his simple demonstration of kindness and love in going out of his way to do something good for me. He is a busy, busy man, and he made our friendship a priority.

It's a nice thing in itself, but it also gives some perspective. Do we love God because He is perfect and righteous and holy and just and magnificent? Or do we love Him because in an extreme act, He went out of His way to do something great for us? He is a busy, busy God, and He made our relationship a priority.

The Start of Something New

So I'm getting married next month and it seems like time for some reflections on that elephant. To clarify, by elephant, I'm referring to the significant happy event, not the fiancee.

The format of my reflection shall be a dialogue between two fictional characters, Bebo and MattDunn. It shall remain a didactic exercise for the reader to determine whether one of these personae is allegorical for a real-life person of relevance and whether one is simply contrived for this blog post.

Bebo: Thanks for meeting me here in this quirky coffeeshop, MattDunn.

MattDunn: You're welcome, Bebo. I don't even like coffee, but I'm a bit of a junkie for human companionship, so I'm generally amenable to meeting with anybody, anytime, anywhere if it means good conversation.

Bebo: So is it true that you're getting married? Facebook tells me so, but you've also been twice previously married on Facebook, so I don't know whether to take you seriously.

MattDunn: Yup. It's true. It's happening.

Bebo: Wow, so tell me about your fiancee. What do you like about her? How and why did you come to decide that she was going to be the one for you?

MattDunn: I wanted to start my dynasty soon, and she's a woman of child-bearing age with all indications of fertility.

Bebo: True statement, but that describes all the dozens of women over the years who fallen madly in love with you that you've had to fight off with a stick.

MattDunn: Well, I'll tell you, when we first started dating, I found myself focusing on more of the differences between us than any valuable commonalities. And I'll tell you, most of us aren't born naturally able to love unconditionally and sacrificially, and to think of each other in the best possible light. I think by default, we tend to want to find carbon-copies of ourselves. So I was a little more critical of her then. I used to think: she doesn't sing as well as I do, she doesn't dance as well as I do, she doesn't cook as well as I do, she doesn't follow sports, and she doesn't watch a lot of movies, so what does she have going for her?

Bebo: Seems a little harsh.

MattDunn: I agree completely, and it's pretty immature, but when you think about it, everybody seems prone to that sort of self-centered thinking. Girls will grow up making lists of attributes for their ideal husband: he has to love animals, he has to be a musician, he has to be funny, he has to be taller than I am, he has to care about third world countries, or whatever; the point is that most people make lists of what they're looking for in their counterpart and expect a real, three-dimensional, breathing human being, flawed and fantastic at once, to match up with this fantasy wish list. It's trivial and superficial and unrealistic when you put it like that, but it's common, and I fell into that a little bit.

Bebo: So it wasn't her fault for not measuring up to your expectations.

MattDunn: It was my fault for projecting trivial expectations on her. You can't approach a relationship with the subconscious hope of the other person changing into someone else for you. That's not fair to them. Where do you get off asking them to change like that?

Bebo: So can't a person have standards for marriage?

MattDunn: Absolutely they can and they should. But they should realize that they're not on the market for finished products. People are meant to do a lot of their growing up through the experience of marriage; they're not supposed to be polished, completed works prior to it. I know a lot of girls in college who automatically ruled out a lot of earnest and good guys around them because they weren't able to see that the guys were works in progress, still learning to be real men.

Bebo: Yeah, you still haven't answered my question about why you picked your fiancee as the one for you.

MattDunn: Simply put, she has the biggest heart of anyone I know. I've never known anyone who loved me as completely and unconditionally and sincerely and unreservedly as she does. She is never too tired to talk about my day. She is never unwilling to put aside what she has in front of her to take care of something for me. She used to walk a mile and back to my apartment just to do my dishes or laundry when I lived off-campus. If there's anything she can do to better my day, she does it without question or hesitation. She never holds back affection or affirmation. She always, always smiles a megawatt smile when I come into the room. It's like I turn on her smile just by existing. She has a lovely smile. She is my biggest fan, and if one of our deepest needs is to be known and loved and liked for who we are, I will never find someone who could love me better. There's an excerpt from a book I was reading recently called Third Class Superhero by Charles Yu:

It's the truth like he has never heard the truth before. She doesn't mean it with sentiment or virtue, doesn't want credit in the big book of good deeds or bonus points towards Heaven. She doesn't regret it or begrudge him a single minute of her life. Her love for him is not something that can be changed -- it's physics, not emotion: It's the atomic weight of radium. It is vast and it is exact. It is tender and finite and inexhaustible. Her love for him is a fact. Her love for him is a brutal fact about the world.

That's what I think about it, Bebo, and I'd have to be a prize idiot to walk away from that kind of love. It's the best thing in the world.

Bebo: MattDunn, it sounds like your time dating Emily has really deepened your understanding of what love is.

MattDunn: It's definitely transformative. It's also nice to find a sweet Christian girl who will watch South Park and The Ultimate Fighter with you. And on days that I miss The Ultimate Fighter, she'll even send me a link so I don't have to search for the episode on Google and spoil the results of who wins the fight for myself.

Bebo: How does Jesus Christ fit into your perception of marriage?

MattDunn: I can think of three distinct ways that the personage of God is irrevocably intertwined with the concept and practice of love, and marriage, at its most ideal, is the culmination of love here on earth. The first way is that we humans are created in the image of a loving God. Bespotted and adulterated as we have made ourselves, 1 John 3 tells us to "behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! [...] Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him." That same chapter tells us that our ability to love is a God-given gift: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not love God, for God is love." So if we can act in love and live a life where we love others in a mode pure and complete, we are doing so because God made us as reflections of His nature and design.

Bebo: All right, fair enough. We were made by a loving God in His own image, so it stands to reason that our capacity to love would follow suit. What's your second connection to God?

MattDunn: Well, it's the fact that Jesus Christ demonstratively taught us to love. Everything He wants us to do, He did himself. In 1 John 3, we are told that we love "because He first loved us," and that "in this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins." Jesus didn't just sit outside the temporal realm and make broad declarations about love -- He came down and did it the hard way. So when Paul tells us men in Ephesians 5, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her," it is a powerful command to love sacrificially.

Bebo: So how does that play out in your personal relationship with Emily?

MattDunn: One of the biggest lessons we have to learn to be decent human beings is learning how to forgive. And forgiveness is not a blanket nicety: it's a personal surrendering of your own rights to allow for the shortcomings of another person who has damaged you in some way. Sometimes when Emily did something stupid or wrong, I would kinda hold on to that anger or the fact that I was right and she was wrong, and even if I said I forgave her, I would remember it the next time she made the same mistake. There's no such thing as "forgiving and not forgetting." Forgiving means you have to give the other person a blank slate, every time, up to infinity, no matter what. But the lesson was really transcendent for me because it made me think of how my sins were personally grievous to God, to the point where He had to bleed and die for them to be forgiven: not just statistics on a sin-spreadsheet He could erase with the push of a button. And yet His mercies are still new every morning, so that's something that's expected of me.

Another more metaphorical example is debt. Emily has a pretty sizeable college tuition debt, and when we get married, I will assume and pay most of the debt. This situation had the potential to engender resentment and frustration, but a good friend pointed out to me that when Christ positioned Himself as the bridegroom to take the church as His bride, He had to pay off her debt with His life and in doing so made her perfected and spotless and new. He counted it as worthy to pay off her debt because it meant He had his perfect bride. There's certainly something there I can take away from His example as I go about paying Emily's financial debt.

Bebo: MattDunn, you are very wordy and long-winded, and I'm starting to suspect my only role in this dialogue is to break up the paragraphs into more accessible chunks.

MattDunn: By Jove, I think he's got it!

Bebo: That's what I thought. What about the third way that God connects to your up-and-coming marriage?

MattDunn: Just that imperfect people like me are unable to love completely without the daily and miraculous grace of God. It doesn't come easily or naturally to us, despite being made in the image of God. The call to love someone as your wife is an incredibly high and demanding task to be commissioned with, and I'm definitely not up to it on my own, so this marriage will be an exercise in faith and dependence on God for it to work.

Bebo: That's it?

MattDunn: What? What do you want from me?

Bebo: You've spent all this time talking about love, and you haven't even mentioned 1 Corinthians 13. Or the whole Genesis 2 description of Adam and Eve being created compatible for each other.

MattDunn: Oh, everyone talks about 1 Corinthians 13. It's expected.

Bebo: So what is marriage to you? Is it mutual cohabitation with benefits?

MattDunn: It's supposed to be the ultimate witness and testament to God's love. You're supposed to be able to point to a marriage and say, that's what love is, and that's the best glimpse in this lifetime of what God intended when He designed us to love, and the best gift that He has ever given us. I don't think that's true of most marriages, but it's supposed to be. And yes, I'm also looking forward to the benefits.

Bebo: Sex!

MattDunn: Uh, a mobile beer bottle dispensary, but sure, that too. My friend Patrick, who plays a lot of video games, once referred to women as "mobile spawn units." That's another good role for them.

Bebo: So talk to me about your take on the biblical roles of man and woman in marriage, and how instrumental communication is going to be, and whether you've been introduced to the 5 Love Languages or the Act of Marriage, and how will key aspects of your marital intimacy change as you grow older...

MattDunn: No, that stuff doesn't interest me so much. Look, we'll make it work. Marriage has been made to work with great success without a lot of taught methodologies. I love her and she loves me, it's a true statement on bad days as well as good, and God is on our side on this one. It'll all come out okay.

Bebo: What's the best piece of marital advice you ever heard?

MattDunn: From the movie Claudine: "Love is when a man brings the groceries instead of eating yours."

Bebo: So is there a possibility that you'll be getting married and then deployed the next day?

MattDunn: No way, that only happens in the movies.

Hey Stephen

This Sunday, I had an amazing time at church because I was talking to my pastor's wife and she was discussing how she couldn't watch regular boxing anymore because she found the violence of mixed martial arts and the UFC much more appealing. Right on.

The pastor also preached a sermon on Acts 6-7, about the life and martyrdom of Stephen, and it was a great reminder of some simple truths for me. But as I opened my Bible to Acts 6, my eye caught the verses preceding the chapter:

"And when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name."

This verse reminded me that we don't have to rely on foreseeable consequences to come of our ministry, or of our sacrifices. In my last post, I lamented the idea that we would have to suffer through certain periods of our lives, that we would have to sacrifice some of our God-given time to something other than our happiness. And how often do we feel the need to substantiate or rationalize our suffering with a definite benefit or positive consequence that comes of it? But in this instance, the apostles don't see hundreds come to faith immediately afterward, nor do they receive the encouragement of the stubborn religious elders saying, "You're right, Jesus is the Messiah!", nor do angels descend from heaven and give them their notarized deed for a celestial mansion. They take a beating for the sake of their beloved Lord Jesus, and they are glad for the simple privilege to do it.

And Stephen! I hadn't read his story in a long time, so it was a powerful thing to recall the details. Stephen was a young man, still new to the Christian faith, but firm in his convictions and bold in his testimony. And as he delivers his reproach to the council of priests, himself full of the Holy Spirit, he seeds "the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." To offer historical context, in the Judaic judicial system, physically standing was a way of affirming someone's testimony, a more demonstrative equivalent of our placing one's hand on the Bible and swearing. To see Jesus affirming his testimony: what an honor for Stephen, the fearless fledgling believer! And he didn't ask the same questions that you or I ask, what good will come of this action. In all candor, shortly after his martyrdom, "a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered," "and as for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison." It's true that in the long run, the diaspora of believers helped spread the gospel across widespread Middle Eastern regions and sent Saul on his fateful way to Damascus, but there was no way anyone saw that coming at the time. There's no doubt from the way the story is presented, from the testimony Stephen gives, and from the way Jesus Himself stands behind it, that Stephen was doing a magnificent thing for His Lord, but if Stephen were asking the same skeptical questions that I often ask, he wouldn't have acted as he did.

Of course there's a place to think sensibly about using our time and energy well, and of course cost-benefit analysis has its applications in ministry. But for where I am, it's important for me to remember the value of suffering simply in faith for my Lord, to hope that I'm worthy of the same calling as the apostles, and to not make personal cost-benefit the basis of how I approach the gospel and the pursuit of Jesus Christ.

I hope that in time and by transforming grace, I would rejoice to be counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.

This Mortal Coil

I woke up today and I thought, "I hate my job. At least, I hate this phase of my job. I wish I could just skip the next two months of my life and be done with it."

And then I was struck by the gravity and wrongness of my statement.

I guess recently I've realized that I'm concerned with my own finite mortality. I'm especially scared of growing old and dying. It's not that I'm worried, like Hamlet was, about "what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil." It's just that God gives us this one life, that we know of, to make count, and it's flying by day by day.

There are so many things I want to do, so many things I want to see, so many things I want to experience. This human existence that you're living in is the same one in which poets have penned sonnets, in which conquerors have taken Asia, in which architects have built skyscrapers, and in which lovers have built families. Life is too short to consider any of it expendable. I am 24: I am already 1/3 to 1/4 of the way through my expected term, and closer if unforeseen circumstances come to bear, and I feel like I'm just getting started. How can I afford to consider any period expendable? We do love to anticipate things to come, but I can't think of saying of any present period of time, "I wish it were over already" because it's part of a brief, finite lease on this earth. When we abide in the mentality that we wish now were over already, we don't consider the expendable time, and it's almost the same as if we had pressed our magical fast-forward button. --

-- I have to leave for work now. To be continued.

Continuation: there are a lot of things that could be said on the topic of finite mortality and carpe diem and all that, and most of them have been said to the point where there's nothing incredibly new on the subject I could post here. Suffice it to say that while there are things we suffer through patiently and deliberately, there is never a time where you should be wishing away a part of your God-given life. When that dilemma arises, either change your attitude or change your circumstances.

Samaritan

So the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) has worked its way into popular reference, but today I was confronted with the fact that I might not really understand the story well enough to be a Good Samaritan.

I guess if I found someone lying bleeding and battered on the roadside, I'd probably stop and help that person out. That's what any decent person would do. The Good Samaritan is not a story about what any decent person would do because at least two decent people walked right on by the injured man. Priests, righteous men, and the like. I've heard the story once preached (here's the link, just click on the sermon from 6/15/08) in a way that fleshed out a lot of significant contextual details about the Good Samaritan story: that the road from Jericho to Jerusalem was a long, straight road, infamous for violence and robbery, and that a despised Samaritan would be the biggest target for getting his ass kicked on that road, much more so than an Aaronic priest, giving him great incentive just to hurry on his way, and that the naked victim was virtually unidentifiable, essentially an everyman whose only definite characteristics were that he was beaten half to death on the side of the road: that he was in need.

Today I was driving home from work at 12:30 am, and I passed an everyman with his thumb up under a streetlight along the winding country road to home. Faded baseball cap, orange reflective construction worker vest, blue jeans, cigarette. Everyman. As I watched him diminish in the rearview mirror, I saw him stare long and resignedly at the back of my car. Just another car passing by. And I thought to myself that I didn't know anything about this guy, except that he appeared to be in need of a ride, presumably to somewhere like home, but at least to a better place to spend the night than the side of the road in the middle of rural dark nowhere. I wondered why I was so willing to volunteer at homeless shelters in large, sponsored groups, but not to pick this hitchhiker up. A lot of excuses surfaced immediately because we're quick to excuse ourselves: I was tired, I had a long day behind me and another ahead, this man could be a dangerous psychokiller, no normal person would expect to give hitchhikers a ride, I owe it to my family and fiancee to live safely, and a million more. But I didn't really think the guy was a psychokiller. If someone doesn't own a car and wears a construction vest, that makes him underprivileged and therefore violent? I've always said that love means you give the other person the benefit of the doubt. And I realized that I had no good reason not to help him out. That's the thing about helping people: you can start anytime you decide it's what you want to do.

So after five miles of this mental back-and-forth between the little angel and little devil on either shoulder, I turned my car around and drove back to that intersection, to the streetlight, but he was already gone. I was a little relieved, but also ashamed. If Jesus tells a story illustrating how to love your neighbor, and in that story, the person with the most to lose chose to act in love at great personal risk, then a guy like me can definitely give a guy a simple car ride home without letting pre-judgment or inconvenience stand in the way.

Is "pre-judgment" a sort of etymological precursor to "prejudice"?






Addendum: Today (the day after) I saw him again and I gave him a ride home. It would have been a 10 mile midnight walk. His name was Luke, and he told me his life story, and he told me the key to a successful marriage is communication. He's worked at the same paper mill with the same partner for 15 years. I think he was pretty stoked about not having to walk 10 miles.

QNA

I've often been told that my thought progression is typically non-linear. A week ago, I was trying to remember a phrase that I was going to write down that could serve as a simplification for how we meander through problem-solving life, and another question occurred to me: is life a question that begs an answer or an answer that begs a question? And of course, that was a much better thought than the one I was originally trying to recall.

Of course, you can substitute anything meaningful for "life" in that question: is truth an answer that begs a question or a question that begs an answer? What about God? I know people who have come to faith in Jesus Christ because He was the answer to a long series of philosophical and ontological questions: people who started by asking what sort of God might exist, and what sort of God would need to exist for the world to make sense, and what real love might look like in demonstrated form, and how a universal sense of justice and mercy might play out, and they ended up discovering the gospel as an ultimate answer to their sojourning and a completion to what they were missing. This sort of thinking is well found in C.S. Lewis nonfiction. Life was the question that begged an answer. But I also have known of people who have encountered Jesus Christ, in some form or another, and been pressed to something deeper, to ask questions and consider aspects of life they had never before considered or seen. Maybe Paul is a great example: in his encounter with Jesus, Jesus's glory and presence literally blinds him, and based on the reality and magnitude of his experience with Jesus, Paul goes on to ask (and address) questions about his eternal status, how Christians should live, how the church should act and govern itself, and where the young set of believers stood in their faith and their theology. As far as I can read from his writings, Paul did not initially approach life with questions: for him, God was the answer that begged the questions.

There are decidedly people in both camps, and I think nowadays, I sympathize more with the answer-begging-the-question camp. Having gone to a small, private high school, I was exposed to a lot of innovative teachers who were always trying new pedagogical methodologies. The first three days of a physics class might start with an open-ended discussion on the subject, "What is science?" One semester exam for a math class was simply the question: "Is mathematics created or discovered? Explain why." The starting point for learning, for the search for truth, was the big questions, and the value was in the experience of formulating frameworks and testing answers. But there were also the science teachers who were effective by simply making something explode in a beaker on the first day of class, demonstrating to us beyond a doubt that science existed and that it was something to be reckoned with. And based on watching a volatile exothermic reaction or nodes materialize out of nowhere in a vibrating transverse wave on a piece of string, we had to figure out relevant questions and probable answers. And it seems to me that a lot of the Old Testament is God taking that same show-me approach. Bam! Burning bush. Bam! The Red Sea parts. Bam! Pillar of fire. Here I am, I am God, you know beyond a doubt that I am out here, real and in your face. Now that you've seen me, I'm sure you have some questions because I am the Answer that begs the questions.

This demonstrative approach surely finds itself also in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to where the apostle John declares, "This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and send His only Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

When I was growing up, I read almost all of the prominent child psychology books of the 1990's. It's weird, but it's true. My mom would borrow these parenting books from the library, and I'd read them to stay ahead of her so I could see what new parenting techniques or attitudes were forthcoming, so I ended up reading Reviving Ophelia, The War Against Boys, and numerous others, including Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong. That last book addressed trends and implications in moral education in American schools, and in particular, it advocated the old-school William Bennett approach of teaching virtues like honesty, courage, perseverance, and using stories to reinforce the points. The book contrasted this recommended approach with the more recent tendencies to present children with ethical scenarios and have them formulate a sense of morality based on their conclusions: if your family were starving, would it be morally permissible to steal bread to feed them, and so forth. Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong made the point that children are not naturally good -- they have to be taught morality -- and presenting them with complex ethical scenarios before their moral sensibilities are established is disorienting at best and damaging at worst. The book made a lot of ancillary points that were stupid and obsolete in its thinking, but it gave more credence to the notion that sometimes answers should precede questions.

I'm not saying that my proclivity towards the answer camp is more correct (that conclusion is left as an inference to the reader), but it's probable that this classification might serve as a helpful way to understand people better: whether they begin with questions or whether they begin with answers. I think conversations will make more sense. I think life, truth, God can work with either.

I'm a Smart-Ass

Today, during pre-marital counseling, the male half of my mentor couple was asking about blogging, and how it's set up, and I explained to him about free online sites like blogger.com and how some blogs were just desultory expositions on what people did during the day ("Today I walked around the Rice village and ran into an old friend") and some are centralized around a specific theme ("Sarah's Southern Cooking Journey" or "Fred's Foray Through Med School" or "Paul's Political Profferings").

He asked, "So why would people read your blog?" (in a general sense) and I said, "Um, because it's awesome?"

Of course, an old friend once told me, "I always thought of you more as a wise ass than a smart ass."

MLIA.

Double Hockey Sticks

In general, people are too quick to distill the Christian faith into a dichotomy of going to heaven or going to hell, and the point of believing in Jesus is to avoid burning for all eternity. That summary builds a religion motivated by fear and misses the central concept of falling in love and pursuing a personal relationship with a mysterious and wonderful God. There's a lot of imagery around heaven and hell that derives more from Dante and Jonathan Edwards than from any biblical text.

But as undesirable as that dichotomy feels, our notions of heaven and hell are very difficult to dismiss, especially in light of the scattered, but dramatic biblical passages about what happens after physical death. In Matthew 13, Jesus describes what He calls "the end of the age": "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

There's so much scattered and arcane Scripture that makes reference to "the end times" that Christian eschatologists fill books compiling interpretations of the clues: what the 1299 days from the removal of "the daily sacrifice" to the establishment of "the abomination of desolation" might really mean, or what the number 666 really entails. And what comes of that is a fragmented, piecemeal, and usually terrifying perspective on the afterlife: the sort that spawns novels like the Left Behind series or sermons like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

In the book Searching For a God to Love, Chris Blake makes a compelling case that the whole "burning in hell" concept espoused by popular Christianity is "the worst lie ever told." He makes the point that a lot of our conception of hell comes from the ancient Jewish mythology of Sheol, the dark underworld, and that a Christian paradigm built on fear is irrational, since the most frequently given biblical command given by God to people is "do not fear" or "be not afraid." Also included is an illustrative story about a man who meets an angel walking down the road. The angel carries a bucket of water in one hand and a torch in the other and when asked, explains that the water is to put out the flames of hell and the torch is to burn down the castles of heaven -- "Then we'll see who really loves God."

There's an artificial contrast here set up between wanting to believe in a desirable God and wanting to believe in a real God, where real is defined by Scriptural inferences. The former mindset says, of course God is good and loving and merciful -- what kind of God would be cruel enough to send your parents or grandparents or best friend to eternal damnation? What kind of God would be impotent or uncaring to save them from a horrible fate? What kind of God do you believe in? And the latter mindset says, well, the Bible objectively mentions heaven and hell, so what kind of idealized, indulgent contrivance of a God are you hoping for, when the Scriptural evidence of judgment is before you? The artifice comes from the fact that our conceptions of heaven and hell are scattered notions at best; we know some things, but not all things, and we know what many Scriptures say, but not what they mean. I had a youth pastor who said he was once convinced that the Apocalypse was coming in the 80's because the winged demons that scoured the earth were clearly the UH-1 Huey helicopters in Vietnam. So to say that our popular paradigm of heaven and hell is objectively Scriptural is a narrowly focused perspective at best: it's like reading the parts of an automobile tech manual about the warning indicators and concluding that the car is inherently a death trap. And the truth that has to come to bear is that God is loving and God is incomprehensible to us: surely in those two truths, we can allow that there may be a truth that satisfies both the Scriptures we read and the God we want to follow.

I think about these things because my grandparents are not believers in Jesus Christ and because they're aging all-too rapidly. I wonder why this circumstance doesn't seem like a pressing issue for people, especially my parents. Why nobody worries about the prospect of old people, our loved ones, perishing eternally. Is it that we think that there are other ways to the Father besides Jesus? Because (with allowances for Romans 1) most of us think there aren't. Is it that we really don't believe in the reality of heaven and hell? Because most of us say that we do. Is it that we don't think we have an integral role to play in the advance of the gospel? Because most of us say we have. Is it that we don't care about our grandparents, our relatives, our friends who have not found salvation in the One we claim to be the only source of salvation?

I know it's bad salesmanship, and worse relationship for that matter, to be pushy about things, but you'd think more people would be showing more concern about their grandparents getting older or even their friends approaching death day by day. You'd think we would be like Paul, who so desired the salvation of the Jewish people that he claimed he would give up his own salvation if it would guarantee theirs. I don't see that most of us are like that. We have a lot of thinking to do to reconcile what we believe about heaven and hell and whether that adds up with any Scriptural basis and how we want to think God would treat our loved ones who are at once sinners in the hands of an angry God and beloved children of a kind Creator and people who mean the world to us. I know in my head that we are all sinners who deserve what we get and that the redemption of Jesus Christ and our promised eternal bliss is an unwarranted mercy, so it's missing the point to blame God; but I think in my heart that my grandparents are good people who shouldn't go to hell and that if they die unsaved, I'll probably be asking God why He didn't make a more foolproof system. Does hell, as we think of it, even exist? If Satan is to be eternally punished, would God really give him his own eternal sovereignty? Either we haven't given it enough thought, we've found resolution for our questions on the matter, or we're desperate and dying on the inside from the encroaching crisis.

And if we're wrapped up about the issue, I think that brings us back to what kind of God we believe in. And the reminder that God is loving and that God is incomprehensible helps me think nothing so specific as, maybe unrepentant sinners won't go to hell, but something more broad and true: that God is loving and God is incomprehensible to us. Surely in those two truths, we can allow that there may be a truth that satisfies both the Scriptures we read and the God we want to follow.

A Large Debt is a Great Opportunity to Put Your Money Where Your Money Used to Be.

I think most of us want very much to love and follow Jesus faithfully. Especially when the matter comes to money and material possessions, we endeavor to say what He would want us to say because He Himself had a lot to say on the matter: Jesus lived a nomadic lifestyle, derided rich Pharisees and tax collectors, and ate with beggars and prostitutes. We admire that He was so willing to be poor because He was so aware of what true wealth is. Theologians debate back and forth about what it could mean that the Beatitudes in Matthew say "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and the equivalent verses in Luke read simply, "Blessed are the poor." Sermons tell and re-tell the story of the poor widow who, in giving her last mite to the church, gave a bigger contribution than the other more prosperous donors. And so on.

There are also many who tend to temper this profligate dismissal of the value of money with arguments for good stewardship and counterarguments on the side of material pursuits. These people are the people who would say, "Well, if you really believed that, then what's to stop you (or everyone) from donating all their money away and living a happily ascetic homeless existence?" They would continue with that thought, "See, you don't really believe that Christians shouldn't have money. It would be poor stewardship and horribly irresponsible if you didn't take care of your family and their future. Plus, you have to earn money to give it away. Also, the whole Bible talks about taking care of the poor and destitute among us. If having no money isn't a significant thing, why make such a huge deal about them being poor and us not being poor?" Some such arguments may be motivated by a desire to preserve a comfortable status quo, but a lot of it is well-intentioned and well-thought-out.

So if tomorrow, you suddenly and unexpectedly incurred a $100,000 dollar debt, how would you react? It would be a wonderfully pragmatic test to see what you really thought about the matter of money.

I suspect many Christians would interpret such circumstance as exactly that: a test. Either they need to pray and believe harder, or it's one of those karmic what-goes-around-comes-around phenomena, but if they wait it out in faith, then eventually God will bless them, and probably (although never voiced aloud) financially. Either that, or there's some lesson hidden in the circumstance that they have to figure out, some revelation about how they're living their life, and if they figure it out, God will restore normality. It's how our common interpretation of the book of Job and Chicken Soup for the Soul resolve: no one just dies poor and alone without the closure of either a belated reward or a valuable life lesson.

"The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the earth produced its fruit." -- James 5:16-18

"And the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed, the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." -- Job 42:10

The other extreme is also pretty conceivable. Many people simply divorce the issue of money from any sort of spiritual application. Money is one of those necessary tangibles, the currency of this temporal existence, and something that won't exist in heaven, so why bother placing all this spiritual value on who has it and who doesn't, and how you spend it?

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." -- Job 1:21

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moths nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." -- Matthew 6:19-21

"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit,' whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.'" -- James 4:13-15

Those people are like the people who are quick to point out the Biblical distinction that the love of money, vice money itself, is the root of all evil. There's a lot of Scripture out there that would suggest that distinction is simply splitting hairs: that to seek or have lots of wealth is to keep a Pandora's Box on top of a gasoline tank next to a live, plugged-in arc welder. What I'm saying is, a lot of Scripture almost makes you uncomfortable to be on the side of the rich.

"Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of the Sabbath." -- James 5:1-4

"Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors." -- James 2:5-9

"Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and gentleness." -- 1 Timothy 6:6-11

The funny aspect of being $100,000 in debt is that there are a million Christian books and solutions for how to manage the money you have in a Christ-honoring way, but few satisfactory answers to the issues of having no money. And probably the best way to think about that one is to do what Paul said in his final letter to Timothy: remember Jesus Christ.

"Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." -- Matthew 8:20

"You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold [...] but with the precious blood of Christ." -- 1 Peter 1:18-19

"For you were bought at a price." -- 1 Corinthians 6:20

If you had suddenly and unexpectedly incurred a $100,000 debt, and you had to pick among a myriad of Christian perspectives, my hope would be that the circumstance would draw you closer to the mind of Christ, and that it would tangibly remind you that once you were in grave and inescapable debt, and that God paid it for you at great personal cost. And that oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be.

Job Satisfaction and Other Shorts

Job Satisfaction IN THE NAVY!
(Binary Scale)

Find pleasure: 1
Search the world for treasure: 0
Learn science technology: 1
Begin to make my dreams all come true, on the land or on the sea: 0
Learn to fly: 0
Play in sports: 0
Skin dive: 0
Study oceanography: 1
Sign up for the big band: 0
Sit in the grandstand when your team and others meet: 0
Sail the seven seas: 0
Put my mind at ease: 0
Make a stand: 1
Protect the motherland: 0 (training commands to date)
Join your fellow man: 1

The perks of my job are apparently highly exaggerated.

This next generation of Americans will be one of selectively excellent spellers. Specifically, every female will be able to spell the words "bananas," "delicious," "tastey" (sic), "Fergie," and "glamorous." This phenomenon recalls an earlier generation that was able to spell the words "some," "pig," "terrific," "radiant," and "humble." If the wisdom of the ages were collated, the sentence "Some terrific, delicious, tastey, glamorous, radiant, bananas, humble pig Fergie" would be flawless except for want of a predicate.

Seriously, did no one think to spell out "laodicean" in a pop song? The Scripps spelling bee could've gone so much further.

Current Events

So Farah Fawcett died this past week. Farah Fawcett goes to heaven and meets St. Peter, and St. Peter says, "Farah Fawcett, you seem like a good person who's led a good life, and I'm also secretly a big fan of Charlie's Angels, so I'll grant you one wish." Farah Fawcett shuts her eyes and thinks for a minute, then says, "I just wish there were something that could happen that would make all the children of the world safe."

Man Things

I noticed a few days ago that the men's bathroom at work has a bank of four urinals. In accordance with man law, it's very bad form to take a urinal adjacent to someone already peeing: protocol dictates one empty stall as a buffer. So why then would you design a bathroom with an even number of urinals in a row? You're basically wasting a space because only two people can pee in a bank of four, whereas two people could still pee in a bank of three and maintain the necessary one stall separation.

Recently, I went to a social gathering with the men from my church in Saratoga. We ate wings and drank beer and for this particular Monday night, the men gave sound wisdom and supportive prayer for one of them who was about to get married. I generally like these guys, and I realized that I felt somehow that they were more real, genuine people because they were at ease with themselves and because they drank, smoked, and cussed about as often as I do, which is something you rarely find in a group of men who take their faith and their church seriously. The pastor was there and everything. Now, it's obviously true that these vices or habits have nothing to do with being either authentic or pretentious, or even good or bad. But it's interesting that I had to consciously recognize my thought as an errant misconception. Winston Churchill's quotation, "Never trust a man who has not a single redeeming vice," came to mind, and while you can debate its truth, I think the perception is a powerful one.

I know a lot of strong Baptists out there who would flip out at the presence of alcohol at a church gathering, and I tend to opine that you shouldn't add extraneous rules to biblical living: just because you don't like alcohol or you think social drinking is a bad idea doesn't mean you can make it a biblical principle not to partake. And the same with smoking or cussing or gambling. And I hate the idea that what separates us from the world is anything other than the redemptive grace and salvation of Jesus Christ, as opposed to the stereotyped behaviors of not-smoking, not-drinking, not-cussing. But at the same time, one has to pause upon reading Romans 14, which says that even the perception of sin can easily lead fallible people to real sin. And while it's not the case for me, could some people be motivated by the desire to be perceived as a "cool Christian" as opposed to a churchified square? Because doing anything solely for that reason would also be a bad thing.

Things to think about at tomorrow night's poker party, and by think about, I mean think about while I'm possibly smoking, drinking, and gambling.

Vive La Compagnie

I am the one who encourages other believers to step outside of their comfort zones and to push past Christian convention. But here is something else that is true: it's always a palpable blessing to come home to a fellowship of believers.

My friend Mithun reminded me of that truth in his recent blog post:

"Much of it has to do with, I believe, the assumptions that pervade my environment. In law school, all of my reading, all of the class time I attend, and most of my conversations with friends have an implicit secular assumption. Behind each word lies the quiet whisper of 'there is no God, there is no God, there is no God….' Here, the opposite is true. The reading and lectures, as well as all the conversations with my 109 fellow Blackstone legal interns, have a common premise which is not at war with my deepest beliefs, but instead is in harmony. Every word has in its background the growing declaration of 'Christ is Lord, Christ is Lord, Christ is Lord….' I am beginning to re-view the law, society, and culture, from a Christian perspective."

There is great value in a questioning mindset, and there are definite problems with camping in a sheltered Christian comfort zone. But the follower of Jesus Christ is often best set up for success in the company and encouragement of other disciples. As Ephesians 4 explains,

"And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head -- Christ."

By default, I tend to push for the consideration of alien ideas, for re-thinking theology through different perspectives and paradigms, for syncretistic thinking. These approaches have their place and their benefit. But reflecting on Scripture, there are multitudinous key passages that warn the reader: build your house upon solid ground, vice shifting sand (Matthew 7). Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ (Colossians 2). Do not despise prophecies. Test all things: hold fast to what is good (1 Thessalonians 5). O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge (1 Timothy 6).

Scripture is clear and consistent on the point that there are a lot of false ideas and philosophies out there that would ask you to believe in their veracity; Scripture is adamant that we hold fast to Jesus Christ and His gospel, and it commands us so because God knows we are easily distracted and confused, and that by leading us away from life, false ideas lead to destruction. Strong fellowship in community with other Christians is one of God's great safeguards for us.

My friend Bonnie asked my opinion about her possibly dating a friend with firm agnostic beliefs and remarkable six-pack abs. And what I told her was this: that you can't substitute a lifetime partner who will ground you in the truth of Jesus Christ and always remind you of your first, best love for a conversationalist, no matter how good a conversationalist this boy may be. It sounds judgmental, and it's not meant to be, but I'm convinced that in marriage relationships, the goal is to look out for and promulgate the other person's welfare, chiefly in the sense of his or her relationship with God. A brilliant conversationalist makes a good friend, but Eve was formed to be Adam's helper and conjugate.

I've had these thoughts for a while, but the watershed moment for me was a few weeks ago during church service. The church I attend in Saratoga Springs includes as part of its service a time for faith stories or sharing, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 14:26, which frankly is a great practice. And one of the ladies said three words with great authority and conviction: "Father, you reign."

I've posted a lot of words and thoughts on this blog, and I've spoken and listened to even more with other thinkers, but sometimes, when someone speaks the truth, all it takes are three simpler words conveying one simple concept, and you're left with nothing but awe and appreciation. Because to that point, it had been a long, long time since I'd stopped to admire God for who He is, to dwell in the truth of "Father, you reign."

We do love the notion of being called to remote places as lone emissaries of the gospel. We pray the prayer of Isaiah when he declares, "Here am I, Lord, send me." We use the words "stranger in a strange land" and "in but not of the world" with considerable frequency. Sometimes, God does call us to leave our comfortable place and go to Nineveh alone. And it's true that Jesus, in His final hours on earth, was very, very alone in His path.

But I like to think that Jesus's time on earth wasn't a lonely one. He was certainly relegated to a human body and away from His rightful place with His Father. But do you think He felt alone surrounded by lepers, prostitutes, and tax collectors? Or do you think He felt joy to live in communion and proximity with His beloved creation, whom He had foreknown and for whom He gave His life? I think Jesus took real joy in fellowship with His disciples in particular. It was certainly good motivation to bring the fish and the bread to Lunch Bunch.

Like a King, I may live in a palace so tall
With great riches to call my own.
But I don't know a thing in this whole wide world
That's worse than being alone.

All this to say, while God may sometimes call us to a wilderness time, I'm happy to have found a church in Saratoga Springs.

The Two Hour Interlude

I spent most of today making a delicious meat stew, partially in hopes of bartering for some birthrights, but I got no takers, which is probably what I deserve for using beef in lieu of venison.

The other night at Bible study, I realized how much it matters to me that I approach Scripture in a way that I can really legitimately and usefully understand it. My current job involves a lot of technical instruction and training from written operational procedures and technical manuals, and a lot of them are incorporate a lot of glaring inconsistencies, shaky assumptions, shady explanations, or loose approximations that engender a lot of indignant protest from the exacting engineering major being trained. But for the sake of consistent training and operation, we have to go with the flow and accept what's written in the technical manuals: we have to hit the metaphorical "I Believe" button. Well, I realized I have a really hard time just letting things go with Bible study. When someone says, "Oh, I read this article online that said this is the answer, so there we have it" and considers the matter settled, I have a hard time not pushing the issue because I view the study of Scripture as an imperative pursuit of truth. I want to make as few blind or unfounded assumptions as I can. So the thought crossed my mind that we shouldn't have an "I Believe" with the Bible. A second later, I thought that sentence was hilarious, and so far, nobody else has found it remotely funny.

But on the topic of unpacking assumptions and textual understandings of the Bible, some of my friends from my old Messianic Jewish congregation sent me a link to a two hour sermon entitled The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus. The title doesn't really apply until the last fifteen or so minutes of the 2 hour video -- a more descriptive title would have been "Rejecting the Exclusivity and Arbitrary Nature of Rabbinical Authority." If you have two hours free, absolutely watch the video. Watch it with a grain of salt (some of his facts and conclusions are a little dubious), but also watch it in the context of how you interpret truth from Scripture. It's a very compelling message.

I jotted down some notes, some observations to supplement the heavy-handed cases made in the sermon.

-- Gordon makes the case that the Pharisees, by expanding the Torah into a legalistic and hypocritical system, transformed the Law from something doable to something impossible to obey. But according to many passages in Romans that comprise a lot of the basis for how we generally understand the gospel, Jesus's sacrifice on the cross was necessitated by the truth that we as sinful humans could not uphold the holy and perfect Law of God. Even if the Pharisees added a lot of legalism and hoops to jump through, the Law that taught us what right and wrong are was never achievable for our flawed natures.

-- It makes sense that Gordon would omit the aspect of grace inherent in the gospel of Jesus. As a Karaite Jew, he would understand things in the more transactional paradigm of the Torah. For anyone to make it, either the Law has to be doable for a human being, or substitutive atonements have to be made. I guess that's still true in our understanding of the New Testament, but we more or less jump to the conclusion that we fall short of the Law and that Jesus was our ultimate and complete atonement.

-- In the same sense, Gordon concentrates solely on Jesus as a Rabbi, a teacher of the Torah. It's a reasonable distillation given Gordon's background, but again a narrow focus that needs to be recognized and taken into account.

-- The whole discussion of how the Pharisees decided that they had the exclusive right to interpret Scripture with a degree of infallibility decidedly recalls a lot of Catholic arguments for Papal authority in certain levels of magisterium.

-- It's true that legalism and the Pharisees' system of earning your righteousness is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus, but there's also a danger to be recognized in completely throwing out tradition, adaptation, and convention. The gospel is meant for the whole world and thus has to translate into different cultural manifestations: some good and beneficial practices will not find their bases explicitly in Scripture. Also, Scripture is sometimes very difficult to read and interpret. While Gordon mentioned that it was meant to be understood by the practice of reading the scrolls aloud to masses of Israelites, there are also a lot of passages about believers who have received the gift of teaching for the edification of others. It's at once very simple and at once very abstruse.

-- Gordon's final challenge to the audience is true, to some degree. Given a Hebrew Yeshua who corroborates the Torah and a Greek Jesus who updates the OS (or some variety of hybrid or halfsie), we Christians do have a choice to make about whom we're following.

And then again, at a certain point, you have to stop chasing rabbit holes and live your life, and it's at those times that you need an "I Believe" button.

The Forty Year Interlude

I've been reading a lot of existential literature lately: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. One popular and concise definition of existentialist thought is the statement "existence precedes essence." In other words, we first fundamentally exist and from there determine our own sense of meaning, value, and truth: essence. Under this paradigm, there is no essence or reason that precedes the fact that we exist; existence is the solitary starting point. Of course, in a lot of existentialist literature, the point is not to look at things from a strictly existentialist perspective, but to waver back and forth between the apparent meaninglessness of a lack of pre-existing essence and the urge to find an underlying reason for the nature of things. Likewise, my thoughts here aren't about classical existentialism but more broadly about figuring out, in a given place and time, "Why am I here? What, if anything, am I supposed to be doing here?" In both of the aforementioned plays, the main characters spend a lot of frustrated dialogue conversing in circles, noting where they are and what they seem to be doing, and trying to figure out why they are there, whether it be for some pre-determined destiny or whether life is something you're supposed to make into your own magnum opus. It is true that the idea of "existence precedes essence" is pretty antithetical to our lives having been foreknown and designed by God before time began, but there are times when you ask, "What am I doing here? What, if anything, am I supposed to be doing here?"

What we know from Exodus 2 is that Moses, raised as Pharoah's daughter's son, killed an Egyptian in defense of a Hebrew, escaped the wrath of Pharoah, and fled Egypt in exile to the land of Midian for forty years before returning to lead the Hebrews from captivity. When you think about Moses in the wilderness for forty years, the question of what he was doing there almost proffers itself as an existentialist quandary:

Was he there because God had planned to cultivate him into a guide and leader for the Exodus of the Hebrew people by training him as a shepherd for four decades?

Was he there because he wasn't where he was supposed to be? Was he hiding from the role of emancipator that God had chosen for him, to the point that God had to appear as a burning bush to wake him out of his lethargy or latency?

Was he there simply as a logical consequence of his actions: killing an Egyptian and fleeing the country? After all, it's only in verse 24 that God "remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob." Was Moses simply in the right place at the right time for God to give him the part?

Was he there because God didn't really have a specific plan for him, other than to stay alive for forty years until the time was right to march back to challenge Pharoah?

See, we know that Moses was there in the wilderness for forty years, and the big question is why? The question is important to me because it seems to me that I've been living the last year in a sort of recurrent spiritual wilderness. I haven't been well connected to Christian community or teaching or discipleship; for the last year, it's mostly felt like God and me out there alone, where it can either be amazingly intimate or terrifyingly lonely. Is it for a reason? Is it a preparatory stage for greater things? Is it somehow punitive or correctional? Is it just because that's the way life is sometimes, coming and going in phases and seasons?

There's biblical precedent for all of the above rationalizations, so maybe the answer is yes. And it is true that trying to parallel my experience with Moses's is violating one of my cardinal rules of biblical teaching: you study the biblical text, you determine what truth is there about God, and then you apply that truth to your life, without skipping the middle step. But a lot of biblical teaching, most notably Jesus's teaching, is parabolic in nature. We are supposed to identify with the characters in the stories that we accept as stories of truth.

Let me know when you figure out why Moses was out there in the wilderness.

Skin Deep

Today I had a thought, and my thought was about how we're wired to be attracted to physical beauty. People always make it out to seem like a bad thing, like if you're a Christian, and you notice and remark that a girl is hot, you need to check yourself because you're falling into an entrapment in a superficial and meaningless value system. You'll miss the deeper aspects of her character because you're too fixated on the outward appearances. "Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised." I have a friend who on occasion wears a t-shirt that reads "Modest is Hottest" and ironically, it's small print right across the breast area of the shirt. Should we then aim to be blind to physical beauty, concerned wholly with the inward?

I have this notion that maybe we're wired to be attracted to and desire physical beauty for the positive reason of learning to be attracted to and desire God. If you would grant: that one reason we were made to be physically hungry (and a reason we fast) is so we would know what it means to depend absolutely on God for sustenance and provision, to hunger and to be sated; that one reason we were made to need sleep is so we would know what it is to be refreshed, which also translates to the renewal that our relationship with God brings about. The physical experiences of our corporeal bodies help us better learn and understand spiritual realities about us, our world, and God. Could it not be the same way with our attraction to beauty? If we know what it is to be electrified at first sight of a beautiful woman, could we not better know what it is to react inexorably to true beauty? Otherwise, how would we understand what it means to call the Lord "Beautiful One"?

I realize there's a lot of room to misstep in taking this line of thought to an extreme, and we're both probably very familiar with those arguments. But you can also be gluttonous if you become too enraptured with physically eating, and you can also be lazy if you become too obsessed with the experience of sleep. We weren't meant to shut our eyes and feel bad about ourselves every time a hot girl walks by. That's not the freedom that Christ promised us.

The Snot Teapot Thought

I mentioned the idea in an earlier post that sometimes it's hard to accept the gospel of Jesus as true because it's "too good to be true." The way His salvation and grace is so perfect and complete and meets all of our needs with no atoning works or righteousness necessary on our parts is just so, well, convenient. And we distrust immediate belief in things that are convenient because we don't want to be called naive, simply calling things true because we want them to be true.

From a certain aspect, the thesis that Jesus is too good to be true adds credibility to His message. Imagine if the Bible spent all of its time talking up the omnipotence and goodness of God and promoting Jesus as the only way to salvation, and imagine if somehow, that salvation was incomplete or defective. Not the triumphant spectacle and redemption we had hoped for and been led to anticipate. What would happen? We would wonder at the disappointing disconnect between what we thought God was capable of and what ended up happening. This perceived disparity is actually the prevalent doubt most amateur theologians wrestle with, manifested specifically as the Problem of Evil.

So if the gospel of Jesus seems too good to be true, then it becomes all the more compelling, since it touts itself as the only way to salvation, freedom, truth, life.

The Neti Pot has been the recent popular buzz item, a proven cure for sinuses and congestion. My fiancee has one, her sister has one, and my roommate has one. The procedure sounds disgusting: you brew up some warm solution in this teapot-looking-contraption, tilt your head sideways, and pour the liquid through one nostril, letting it seep through your nasal cavities and out the other nostril into the sink. It's the stupidest scam I've ever heard of, but 100 % of the users I've talked to swear by its effectiveness, which is remarkably convincing. By all accounts, its ridiculous design notwithstanding, the Neti Pot really is too good to be true, and that's the main reason that I'm becoming convinced it must actually cure sinuses and congestion. Gross.

No Time For Love, Dr. Jones.

The reason that I haven't posted in a while is linked to the reason I haven't had much substantive spiritual insight in a while, and that's because I've had much less time. Since I moved and reported in to my current job, my schedule is basically waking up around 4:30 am, driving to work, working nonstop (maybe a 10 minute lunch break) until 7:30pm or so, then driving back home, making myself dinner and tomorrow's lunch, watching the Houston Rockets give away the second-round playoffs to the L.A. Lakers, and then going to bed to repeat the process tomorrow.

This practical example begs the question of whether God is there (of course He's there in an ontological sense, but is His presence really felt and is our relationship with Him real) when we don't make time for Him. The answer that we want to be true is that God's grace overcomes the banality of our scheduling. We want God to be big enough so that He presents Himself definitively in our thoughts and inexorably in our lives, to the point where it's not a question of our efforts or our abilities to prioritize Him, but a reminder that He is much bigger than us and able to overcome our obstacles for us. I think there are two primary reasons that you might want the above to be true about God and you. The first is a subscription to reformed theology, which rejects the idea that we in our total depravity achieve anything on our own efforts, but that everything is enabled and accomplished through the unfailing grace of God: if there is any reason that a relationship with God succeeds, it is because of God and not of ourselves. And the second reason is that we are lazy and don't want to make time for God, and it's easier to accept the idea that God can be there for us all week without our having to micromanage our relationship with quiet times, church meetings, bible studies, or planned prayer, than it is to make changes in our schedule and priorities.

The answer that I'm learning to this question is part experiential and part biblical. When I was involved in campus ministry, there was an annual predictable cycle in our ministry and in the spiritual lives of most of our Christian members. In August as the semester started, most Cru students would be very excited about the prospect of seeing old friends, meeting new freshmen, starting up bible study, and engaging in discipleship relationships, but as the semester progressed through the academic tribulations of October, November, and December, enthusiasm and passion would wane, and spiritual droughts and doldrums would start to become more frequent and prevalent. Yet every Christmas break from January 2-7 came the Dallas Winter Conference, and uncannily, the conference would always re-invigorate students' spiritual lives. My friends and I would, without fail, return from DWC refreshed, renewed in our commitment to follow hard after God, awed at what He was doing in our lives and on campus, and very much alive in His presence. What happened? Was there an artificial excitement and possibly even valuable spiritual growth imbued by the conference speakers, the worship band, the seminars, and the activities? Sure, to a small degree. People can always be hyped-up by a band or fun-tivities, but this week also brought real insight and transformation. My strong impression was that students who attended DWC would always be guaranteed a renewed and refreshed love for Christ because they put aside hours and hours each day to invest in their relationship with Him. Like any other relationship that was important to them. They studied His words, they read about His life, they talked earnestly with each other about Him, and they did their damnedest to point their hearts towards Jesus and let His promised transformation take place. Year after year, it was a guaranteed rebirth for a person's relationship with Christ because that person would personally invest the time and make it a priority. It's not a theological argument, but it's a truthful observation. You have to make time for things that are important.

I think the direction of this thought is biblically sound, and the reason that we often wonder dumbfoundedly where God is during the work week is that we've consistently ignored what He's told us to do from the beginning: take a break from the mundane every once in a while, and pay attention to the holy:

"Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow [...] Six days you shall do your work and on the seventh day you shall rest." -- Exodus 23:10-12

"Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you." -- Exodus 31:13

The specifics of keeping the Sabbath vary depending on whom you consult and what you read. In Old Testament tradition, the Sabbath was the "Queen of Days" that took precedence over all other days, including Yom Kippur and Passover; weddings could not take place on the Sabbath so as not to distract from the joy of the Sabbath. I don't want to discuss extents of legalism or doctrinal particulars on how to observe the Sabbath because the crux of what I'm learning is that the value is in taking time to "be still and know that I am God." Saturdays or Sundays notwithstanding: we can't complain about how we never feel like God's there or like we can't connect with Him if we don't set aside some time and invest our relationship with Him. Things are by definition made "holy" because they are "set apart" from other trivial things.

That's why when Jesus tells the Pharisees, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath," He might be reproving them for their legalism and hypocritical rules about observing the Sabbath, but He also constructively reminds them of the point of even having the institution of the Sabbath: it's for us. It's a gift from God to us, and the intent is for "you to know that I am the Lord."

I have never been diligent or dutiful about observing the 4th of the 10 Commandments, and I have no trouble admitting that I don't have an answer for how you're supposed to do it, but I know that I very often haven't done anything, and that's surely part of the answer of why it's hard to relate to God when my schedule seems too busy for Him.

You have to make time for things that are important.

Pomophobia and the Emerging Church

As a Christian, should you give according to your abilities? Consider Jesus's parable of the widow who gave her last two mites to the church and was considered a bigger contributor than all the rich men. Think of His words in Luke 12 that remind us, "To whom much is given, of him much is required." Remember all those parables about stewards who were entrusted with their masters' investments. It's reasonable to say that we would do well to give or contribute our finances, time, and efforts in accordance with our abilities.

As a Christian, should you take according your needs? Jesus spoke often about how a preoccupation with personal wealth and possessions could distract a person from enjoying the riches of a relationship with God. Paul set an example of working for his daily sustenance and living simply. Our central story is about the Son of God who forwent his rightful place in heaven for a lower-class existence on earth. It seems reasonable to say that with the eternal inheritances of heaven on our minds, we shouldn't be preoccupied with excesses here in this temporal life, but yes, should take according to our basic needs.

The above two conclusions seem pretty logical, but also neatly affirm the classical definition of communism: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." And with the patriotic people I work with, the label of communism changes everything. Complaints and fears about the prospect of Obama's ever-expanding bailout, about taking everyone's hard-earned money and redistributing it to the poor, lazy, and undeserving. Re-affirmations of capitalism and self-reliance as bastions of American society, hallmarks of the American way. Apparently, there are things that we would agree with on principle about communism, but with the introduction of the label and in light of how the ideology has played out in practice, nobody wants to be a communist. Which is not unlike how I feel about the emerging church and whether I want to call myself a member.

I am usually behind the curve on the nuances and variations of Christian denominations and factions, so most people are probably more aware of the term "emerging church" than I am. A very simple definition would be the segment of Christians whose theology and vision of the church is more adapted to 20th and 21st century postmodern culture. The Wikipedia article for "emerging church" is helpful in outlining its main characteristics, but highlighted with multitudinous caveats about subsections prone to "weasel words," "biased or unverifiable information," and "clarification needed," which seems entirely appropriate for an ideology adapted to postmodernism. A lot of my friends hate the subjectivity of postmodernism, but I have never been a pomophobe, at least as far as literature and abstract ideas are concerned. Where does true meaning lie in a piece of media or text: in the intent of a usually-long-dead author, in the sensory perception and experience of the reader, or somewhere in between? It seems like an important question to ask about the nature of literature, and it seems like an important question to consider theologically. If there is a God trying to send an important message to me through a 2000-year-old book of historical chronicles, poetry, and epistles, how should I go about interpreting it? And clearly people have answered that question because they do choose to go about interpreting it in various ways that have manifested into a thousand different denominations, but few stop to think about the process by which they decide how to answer the question.

But to return to the other question of how to respond to the emerging church, it's intriguing to observe that some of its elements have caught on like wildfire, becoming as universal as the emerging church's best-known dare-I-say-manifesto Blue Like Jazz. During my time at Campus Crusade for Christ, a lot of brochures and ministry literature showed a lot of artistic and aesthetic emphasis: there were a lot of colorful, over-exposed images as backdrops and crazy trendy music videos inviting you to "encounter" God at the Fall Retreat. The new tool "Soularium" evangelism tool offered a few dozen over- or under-saturated photographs that were supposed to prompt an experiential discussion or dialogue about what truth, love, and God were all about. Words like "authentic," "organic," "not-prepackaged," and "holistic" began to replace the suddenly clunky, traditional "Christian-ese" in describing our faith. And these changes aren't simply cosmetic: a lot of the emphasis on social justice, third world concerns, sincere spiritual dialoguing in lieu of evangelistic presentations, and narrative theology has really burgeoned in the last decade or so, and these changes are great changes that have done a lot of great things to distill Christianity down from its hierarchical systems and legalisms to the central (yet decentralized) precepts of unconditional grace, love, and forgiveness. I love the concept of a decentralized, grassroots sort of Christianity because it seems more Jesus-like to me. I believe in all these things, and I believe that Jesus does too.

So in light of these significant positive aspects, why wouldn't I identify completely with the emerging church? The answer lies in my initial reaction to Blue Like Jazz. I hated it because I felt like it was a petulant response to conservative Christianity. As the Wikipedia article articulates, "Christian scholar, D. A. Carson, has characterized the emerging church movement as primarily a movement of protest in which participants are reacting against their more conservative heritage. Carson has pointed out that emergent books and blogs are more preoccupied with this protest than they are with any genuinely constructive agenda." In a certain sense, D. A. Carson has a point. There is sometimes a definite underlying push to set Jesus up as some sort of heroic everyman opponent of the religious establishment, which I don't think was the point of Jesus's time on earth. Also, a lot of newly "authentic" Christians seem like they're simply exchanging their hymnals for baseless, trendy pluralistic mysticism. Catechism for coffee shops, gospel tracts for grainy film clips. And one noticeable feature about reading literature in a postmodern way is that it emphasizes the reader's experience at the expense of devaluing the text itself. Sure, you can read Hamlet a thousand different ways and even turn it into The Lion King, but does the same hold true for Scripture, words that we have always taken to be divinely inspired by God? I wonder ambivalently about the limits of postmodern narrative interpretation because I like translations from King James to more culturally relevant language, but I don't like the idea of someone grasping the retelling of Old Testament from the NBC show Kings as reliable theology. Maybe it's possible that God preserved His meaning across the errata of different English translations, but it's a pretty extreme postmodern stretch to suppose He would grant the same legitimacy for our narrative re-imaginings. It seems to me that in a postmodern sense, we partially become the Authors of our faith, conform God to our image, and in that sense make ourselves gods.

To put it in other terms, here is another excerpt from the Wikipedia article:

"The movement appropriates set theory as a means of understanding a basic change in the way the Christian church thinks about itself as a group. Set theory is a concept in mathematics that allows an understanding of what numbers belong to a group, or set. A bounded set would describe a group with clear "in" and "out" definitions of membership. The Christian church has largely organized itself as a bounded set, those who share the same beliefs and values are in the set and those who disagree are outside. The centered set does not limit membership to pre-conceived boundaries. Instead a centered set is conditioned on a centered point. Membership is contingent on those who are moving toward that point. Elements moving toward a particular point are part of the set, but elements moving away from that point are not. As a centered-set Christian membership would be dependent on moving toward the central point of Jesus. A Christian is then defined by their focus and movement toward Christ rather than a limited set of shared beliefs and values."

The idea of Jesus as the singular epicenter of the paradigm is a true and compelling vision, but if Jesus is the center, unfettered by tradition and belief sets, how do we find and point to Jesus? Through experiential means or through Scripture? Does Scripture validate our experiences that lead us to Christ, or do our experiences validate the Scriptures that tell about Christ?

"O Timothy!" urges Paul at the end of his first letter to his beloved disciple, "Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge -- by professing it, some have strayed concerning the faith." I identify with the sentiment: in the uncertainty of the world and mysteries of ontology, Scripture serves as the definitive lifeline and basis for truth. Of course, a significant contingent of the emerging church discredits the writings of Paul as errant third-party interpretations of the message Jesus really meant to present.

I think a short way to put it would be that I love some of the progressive aspects of the emerging church: the promotion of dialogue, the re-discovery of the poetic and aesthetic aspects of our Scripture, the emphases on social justice and applied grace, the decentralized grassroots style. And I love some of the harder questions raised by the postmodernist perspective. But I don't like the departure from solid Scriptural teaching coupled with a more syncretistic interpretation of the Christian faith: its effect does too much to make us the authors. I can't stand this indecision, married with a lack of vision: everybody wants to rule the world. I realize that Christmas and Easter are inherently syncretistic, but maybe we should question Christmas and Easter too. Sometimes when you mix too many colors, you don't get a jazz-like blue; you get a big, brown mess.

It's certainly worth appending, though, that I really liked Blue Like Jazz on the second read-through, and if there were one branch of Christianity I would identify myself with, it would decidedly be the emerging church.