The Peace and the Passion

A Day with a Toddler

2011-11-17T13:03:00.000-08:00

To rise at dawn and shake the world
With bright stampedes of little feet;
To fly in father’s arms downstairs,
In joyful cries the house to greet;

This is the morning of my son,
A day writ large in toddler’s joy.
We wheel pajama’d legs around
In sheer delight of being boy.

Into the living room we storm,
And see a zoo of friends around:
There’s Tigger, Pooh, and Curious George,
All heaped together in a mound.

Oh, the bliss of finding friends
With glossy fur and smiling eyes!
And oh, the joy of lining them
In new arrangements of surprise!

Now breakfast—that’s a messy thing:
It seems that spoons are just too slow;
So milk-dripped fists make quicker work
Of cereal; then off we go!

Baby Sam is borne downstairs,
And told directly where to stay;
He’s greeted with a “Hi, Baby!”
And then his brother’s off to play.

First lines of shapeless Play-Doh ducks,
Then markers on a cardboard box;
Next hiding underneath a chair
While Dad wrestles him into socks.

The world outside is bright and cold,
And full of reckless wonderment.
In coat and hat we face the day
And ponder where the leaves all went.

We pat the giant of a tree
That stands alone beside our car;
And murmur sympathetically
When we dislodge a chip of bark.

We chase the pigeons or a cat
If e’er they stray across our yard;
Driven by fascination’s fire
Rather than any thought to harm.

Puddles are perfect for jumping,
Or better, for sitting down in;
Picnic tables are for climbing,
And fallen leaves for tumbling in.

Inside for lunch, then take a nap
(A bright reprieve for Mom and Dad!)
Two hours down, or three at best,
Then face the world with vigor glad.

We read a stack of story books,
All familiar, yet wildly new;
Well-known books are fonder friends,
At least for boys not quite yet two.

At supper we sit down to eat
And have a battle of the wills—
He, who wants no more than cheese,
And parents urging vegetables.

Bathtime’s a fierce and wild cascade
Full of rubber ducks and splashing;
Pajamas slide on wheeling limbs
With laughter and with thrashing.

Now off to bed, but with a prayer—
He often wants to pray for “house!”
We pray for all within our home,
Then hug tight Pooh and Mickey Mouse.

He falls asleep; we breathe a sigh;
We’re done with one day for our son.
But then we stop and realize—
Oh man, we’ve got another one!

Matt's sermons now available online

2011-09-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

You'll notice that there's a new link in the top lefthand corner of my blog--"Podcasts of Matt's Sermons." By clicking this link, you'll be brought to the website of the Second Baptist Church, where you'll see a list of recent sermons available for download. Most sermons are in .mp3 format, so they can be downloaded and played on most computer media players, as well as on any IPod or MP3 player. The Sunday morning services throughout this year have focused on a study of the Gospel of Luke, and the evening services have followed a study of some of the "Heroes of the Faith" from Christian tradition. We began with two early martyrs of the second century, Ignatius and Polycarp, and are now up to the High Middle Ages. These studies also include a set of notes in a handout, which you'll also find available for dowload in .pdf format. Enjoy!

Happy News for the Burdens

2011-09-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, we welcomed a new addition to our family--our second son, Samuel. Now we have two little boys livening things up in the parsonage, and we're learning to get by on less sleep than usual. Here's a picture of the new little guy:

We had a bit of a scare going into it all, but it turned out wonderfully in the end--a marvelous testament to the power of prayer and the grace of God. The pregnancy had all gone very well, and we were at 37 weeks when they decided to do a late-term ultrasound to verify that the baby was in the right position for birth. That was when they noticed something wrong with his heart--one of the ventricles looked bigger than the other one. They sent us to Bangor (the nearest city of any size, about two hours away) for another ultrasound, and that was where the bad news really hit. The doctors thought they saw multiple abnormalities in the heart--we were looking at the possibility of complex congenital heart defects. They thought they saw not only the problem with the ventricles, but also a leaky valve, a narrowing of the aorta, and maybe even an abnormal hole in the septum. On top of this, they thought his stomach wasn't working quite right, and there were so many problems that they wondered whether there might be an underlying chromosomal disorder playing into all of it. We were devastated, of course--it sounded like our son might not make it at all, and if he did, we would be bringing him into a life of tremendous pain--of open-heart surgeries and hospital stays, maybe for months on end.

They sent us immediately down to Portland (the largest city in Maine, about four hours from home), where the baby was monitored overnight. By this time, of course, we had family and friends and church folks praying for our situation. The next morning, the pediatric cardiologist gave us our first glimpse of hope. There was still no way of knowing for sure what was going on, but he guessed that all of the problems in the heart might be related--it looked to him like a part of the baby's heart that is naturally supposed to close after birth was already closing early, and that narrowing was putting undue pressure on the right side of the heart. He wanted us to have the baby delivered right away. So, that afternoon, just three whirlwind, broken-hearted days since we heard the first hints of bad news, we were ready to bring our son into the world. He was delivered by C-section and taken quickly to the newborn intensive care unit. But, wonder of wonders, Samuel's heart problems completely disappeared all on their own. It was exactly as the pediatric cardiologist had suspected--all of the problem areas of the heart had been related to one problem--an early narrowing of a part that wasn't supposed to close until after birth. As soon as he was born, his lungs opened up and the blood was no longer backing up in the right side of his heart. All the other problems, too--the worries about his stomach and some later concerns over his leg--turned out to be nothing in the end. We have a healthy baby boy at home--praise God!

Update and Thoughts on Writing

2011-08-12T08:21:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long time since I've updated my blog. No doubt my hordes of faithful readers have been pining away for another post for the past five months. But they say that "absence makes the heart grow fonder," which I'm sure is entirely untrue in this case.

During these past few months away from the blogosphere, I've been busy with quite a number of other things. First and foremost, there's another baby on the way, which is always exciting news. Soon there will be two little Burden boys running around. And pastoral work has kept me busy, as always. But it's pleasant work, and it affords me time to read and think and pray, and for that I'm grateful. A good deal of my creative energy has gone into a new sermon series for our Sunday evening services, focusing on the stories of various "heroes of the faith" from the pages of church history. It's a favorite topic of mine, and it's been fairly well-received by the congregation. Incidentally, I may be able to upload my sermons and talks as podcasts on our church website at some point, so I'll add a link to that if that ever becomes a reality.

And I've been working on writing, too. OakTara Fiction, my publisher, just put out a new edition of Freedom Cry (Book 1 of the Hidden Kings Trilogy). Having a second edition printed is usually an indication that sales are going well; but in this case the reverse is actually true. The great length of the novel was making the sale price too expensive to actually entice anyone to buy it, so the second edition was produced for the purpose of making the novel more marketable (ie, smaller font size equals less pages equals less cost). And as an added bonus, the cover art scheme has been revamped, as you can see in the photo on the side. I think it looks great. The lead character has grown quite a bit of hair since the first edition came out (he had kind of a buzz cut before, if you remember). If we ever do a third edition, he'll be in desperate need of a haircut by then!

We've also been working on getting Book 2 of the Hidden Kings Trilogy out--The Conqueror's Song. You can see an early sample of some possible cover art in the picture to the left, featuring a dashingly handsome young woodsman with a Bieber-esque haircut as the hero. I'm very excited about this book, and it should be out soon. I've had some great help from family and friends in the editing process and in the artistic design of the maps, and I'm tremendously grateful for that. Hopefully the novel will be coming out shortly; I'll give more updates as we get closer. This book is a bit of a change from Freedom Cry, because it actually jumps back over a thousand years and explores the legends of the mythic hero Warlent the Conqueror. Reaction from my early readers on this one was a bit more mixed than for Freedom Cry, partly because it does have a bit of a dark twist near the end. But never fear! It all works out in the end, and it sets up the plot of the final installment, Pathways of Mercy, for a wonderful wrap-up. Whereas Freedom Cry and The Conqueror's Song could each stand on their own as separate novels (although there are a lot of intriguing ironies for the reader of The Conqueror's Song if they're familiar with Freedom Cry), the third one is going to lean on both and bring them together into one single story. In Pathways of Mercy, we'll return to the cast of Freedom Cry and tie in some of the plotlines of that world's history that we learned from The Conqueror's Song, and with the whole trilogy in view, I think it will make a marvelous epic. So if you fell in love with the heroes of Freedom Cry, don't despair that book 2 will take you to a different story--we'll come back to them soon enough and tie it all together.

Anyway, it's all very exciting. But to tell the truth, I've been having much more fun working on a completely different story this summer. The trilogy is already complete on my end (it's just a matter of the publication process now), so I started work on a new project. It's shorter than any of my previous novels (at which news some of you will breathe a sigh of relief), and with much more of a whimsical flavor to it. It's called "Whispers of Adventure" (that's just a working title for now), and it's set up as a sort of Shrek-meets-Pilgrim's-Progress allegory of the Christian life. But not only is it a lot of fun, it also turned out to be quite a bit more substantive and edifying than I thought it might. I began writing it a few years ago as a tongue-in-cheek spiritual autobiography of sorts, and it took on a life of its own.

And that brings me to a complaint. One of the difficult things about being an author, at least in this early stage of my "career", is that by the time one of my novels gets published, it's already ancient history for me. I'm doing a talk at the local library about Freedom Cry this week, which is nice and all, and I'm very excited about it, but it's been four years since I finished writing the revised version of the novel (seven years since I started it)! The Conqueror's Song has been basically done for five years, and even Pathways of Mercy has been sitting around for a couple. So the book I'm most excited about now, "Whispers of Adventure," will probably not get out in print for a few years, either. Which is tremendously disheartening, because one of the great joys of writing is to have someone share in one's delight. When I write a book, I fall in love with the characters, the world, the story, with the sheer act of creation. And I want other people to love it, too. But I only have a few family members (my brother Josh, my wife Rachel, and my Grandma Burden) whom I pressure into reading my first drafts; everyone else often seems to prefer to wait for the published version. But by the time the published version comes out, my delight has waned and is already focused on another writing-project in the works.

Oh, well. I guess there's not much I can do about it. But if you're one of my family or friends who has read this and would like to share in my joy, just let me know and I can get you a draft-copy of "Whispers of Adventure." Or, in the meantime before it gets published (if it gets published, that is), you can support my hobby by buying copies of the Hidden Kings Trilogy. If you've read this far, I hope you've enjoyed these scattered thoughts/exultations/complaints about writing. I'll try to blog more regularly in the weeks to come.

In Praise of Church People

2011-03-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

I was at a local pastors' meeting about a week ago, and the conversation turned to the topic of the people in our various congregations. And, as one might expect, there was some mutual commiseration expressed over the difficult people that we pastors have to deal with. And certainly, there's some truth to that. Pastors have to work very closely with a great number of people, and all people, suffering as we do from the same broken human nature, invariably disappoint us. This is especially true when they are being measured against an ideal standard of behavior like Christian morality. But it got me to thinking. One hears too much about the difficulties and personality conflicts and pettiness of church people. One hears too often about people getting "burned" by other Christians or by experiences at church. Naturally, it is the bad things that get talked about--the way that church people gossip and backbite and complain, the way they never seem quite able to "love one another" the way the New Testament exhorts.

And there is some truth to that. But there's also another side to this discussion, and it doesn't get spoken about often enough. As a pastor, I can honestly say that I count myself a very fortunate and blessed person. Why? Because I get to work with some of the best people in the world. I get to live and fellowship with people who are regenerated by the Holy Spirit, people who are being shaped into the image of Christ, people who are becoming partakers of the divine nature. Yes, there are some people in church who act pettily from time to time. But there are also saints there, men and women of radiant virtue. I am continually amazed to see the depths of love, care, gratitude, and gentleness that flows from these church people, like rivers of living water. I have been blessed to stand in the presence of men and women who have been faithful servants of Christ for decades upon decades, who seem to overflow with the grace of God. I'll say it again, because I genuinely believe it to be true--church people, for all their failings, are the greatest people in the world, and I am honored to walk among them.

Update and a Book Review

2011-02-22T09:50:00.000-08:00

First of all, my apologies for my long hiatus from blogging. But I take comfort in the fact that my few faithful readers must have long ago lost their expectation of frequent, regular posts from me. My creative muses have fallen rather silent recently when it comes to writing essays or poetry, possibly because so much of that creative energy is funneled into sermons and Bible lessons now that I'm a pastor. I haven't been making much headway on writing my novels recently, either. My fantasy trilogy is already complete in the manuscript stage, and the second installment, The Conqueror's Song, was just signed under contract with OakTara Fiction, so hopefully that will be out in print relatively soon. I have a few other ideas for new novels I've been toying around with, but I'm not yet convinced that any of them have enough merit to actually pan out into a complete work. (Some of them are just fun stories that are so unlikely to actually appeal to a real publisher that I might just shrug off the fear of intellectual theft and serialize the stories here on my blog for your enjoyment.)

Second, a very quick update: Life is good, both at church and at home. Josiah is a delight, now almost 14 months old--he toddles through the halls of the parsonage, babbling away all the while. And I'm happy to announce that we're now expecting our second child! The due date is September 5 (Labor Day, ironically).

Third, an encouragement to read a literary treasure: In lieu of writing my own essay for this post, I thought I would offer a review for a book I read about a month ago, which deserves to be a well-read classic but, sadly, has fallen on hard times in terms of its popularity in recent centuries. This review will give you a good bit of detail as to the background of the book, and I offer it up because I really believe that this book is worth reading: The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius. Don't let the title scare you--it's actually written in story/dialogue form, and Philosophy is an actual character in the story, not just a dry subject of interest for scholars. And don't let the arcane name of the author scare you, either. Boethius is a great guy, and represents a period of history that is tragically misunderstood today. The Consolation of Philosophy stands as a shining example of the literary and intellectual creativity of the period of late antiquity in Europe that is usually dismissed as irrelevant--the 5th and 6th centuries--often described as "the fall of the Roman Empire," or the beginning of "the Dark Ages." Incidentally, if your history teachers described this period of European history in those terms, they were probably either ignorant or lying to you. But that's quite beside the point for now, except in making the suggestion that it's only because of that very ignorance and "chronological snobbery" that The Consolation of Philosophy is so little read nowadays.

If you have any interest in philosophy, in classical literature, in early Christian theology, or in the cultural legacy of medieval Europe, Boethius should be on your to-read list. The Consolation of Philosophy was wildly popular and influential for a thousand years after it was written in 524, and it formed a bridge from the world of classical philosophy, through the Middle Ages, all the way to the Renaissance. And it's worth reading not just because of its importance in the history of Western thought, but because it addresses questions that are just as relevant today as they were in the 6th century--questions about the meaning of suffering, the problem of evil, why bad things happen to good people (and why good things happen to bad people), what attitude the person suffering from a twist of fate should take, and so on. And, as the title suggests, the answers to these questions form a consolation--a true comforting, a positive take on life's most negative aspects. The real genius of the book is not any originality in its answers--that's not what Boethius was shooting for. Rather, the aim was to take the best answers from classical traditions--principally from Plato, Aristotle, and Stoicism--and to present them in a winsome format of dialogue and poetry, combined with some poignant reflections on theological issues that touch on these questions (such as free will, providence, and determinism). The result is a book that's relatively easy to read (at least compared with some other ancient philosophical literature), and that is rich with practical wisdom and theological insight. (The one part which might prove challenging for some readers is the final section, which focuses on human free will and divine foreknowledge, but for anyone with a taste for theology, it's well worth tackling.)

The story begins with Boethius' own situation. He was a high-ranking statesman in Rome, a consul who worked with the Senate (yes, Rome still had a Senate even after its "fall") under the rule of the great Ostrogothic king Theodoric. He was also a classical and Christian scholar of international fame, with a reputation as a master of logic and philosophy that lasted throughout the Middle Ages. By the time of his downfall, he had risen to the office of "Master of the King's Offices," one of the highest positions in the Western Empire. Then he had a twist of fate--he was unjustly suspected of treason, stripped of his titles and holdings, and locked up in prison to await his eventual execution. While in prison, he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, and that's the setting of the dialogue. He's in his cell, pondering why all of this has happened to him, when he receives a vision from the Lady Philosophy. They converse back and forth about the questions that have been puzzling Boethius, offering various layers of explanation and practical advice, and each section of discourse is punctuated by an interlude of beautiful poetry.

Among the most poignant sections of the discourse are those where Philosophy explains why the problem of Fortune rewarding evil men is merely an illusion. She reminds us that it is only the good who possess true power, nobility, and wealth, whatever their material circumstances may be; and that the evil man, regardless of his material bounty or favorable circumstances, has evil itself as his constant and sufficient punishment. I won't give away all of Boethius' main points, because they're well worth reading for yourself, even if you're well-versed in classical philosophy. But I'll offer up a few gems gleaned from his pages, just to whet your appetite:

"You are wrong to think that Fortune has changed toward you. This is her nature, the way she always behaves. She is changeable, and so in her relations with you she has merely done what she always does....Really, the misfortunes which are now such a cause of grief ought to be reasons for tranquility. For now she has deserted you, and no man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune."

"If you possess yourself, you have something you will never want to give up and something which Fortune cannot take from you....If happiness is the highest good of rational creatures, and if nothing which can be lost can be a supreme good (because it is obviously less good than that which cannot be lost), then clearly unstable Fortune cannot pretend to bring happiness."

"Man is constituted so that when he knows himself he excels all other things; but when he forgets who he is, he becomes worse than the beasts."

After describing how the cosmos is ordered and held together by the love of God: "O how happy the human race would be, if that love which rules the heavens ruled also your souls!"

"If you consider your beginning, and God your Maker, no one is base unless he deserts his birthright and makes himself a slave to vice."

"Only the wise can do what they want to do; the wicked can follow their desires, but they cannot accomplish what they want. For they do what they feel like doing, and they suppose that they will find among their pleasures the good they are really looking for. But they are bound to fail."

"Anyone who abandons virtue ceases to be a man, since he cannot share in the divine nature, and instead becomes a beast."

"In this way, wise men could abolish hatred; for no one but a fool would hate good men, and hating evil men would make no sense. Vicioiusness is a kind of disease of the soul, like illness in the body. And if sickness of the body is not something we hate, but rather regard with sympathy, we have much more reason to pity those whose minds are afflicted with wickedness, a thing worse than any sickness."

And here's a snippet from Philosophy's final conclusion: "Our hopes and prayers are not directed to God in vain, for if they are just they cannot fail. Therefore, stand firm against vice and cultivate virtue. Lift up your soul to worthy hopes, and offer humble prayers to heaven. If you will face it, the necessity of virtuous action imposed upon you is very great, since all your actions are done in the sight of a Judge who sees all things."

A Christmas Poem for Josiah

2010-12-31T17:56:00.000-08:00

My son, Josiah, just turned one year old a couple days ago, and this Christmas was his first. As a celebration of the joy that he brings to Rachel and me, I wrote this poem for him, and I thought I'd share it with you. (Josiah himself was more interested in wrapping paper than the poem when we read it to him, but maybe someday he'll appreciate it.)

You are my joy, little one, little son.

Many things I love to see,

But one I love most of all—

I love to see you in your mother’s arms,

Beaming joy at me.

I love the way you march about

With arms upraised,

The way you growl and shout

Your excitement to the world,

The way you clap your hands

And wiggle your hips to music,

The way you laugh whenever we chase you

Or surprise, or tickle you.

All the work and labor we put into you

(And it is a lot of work, little son!)

Is repaid a thousand times over

Every time I see you smile.

May God’s grace fill you up this Christmas,

Little one, little son,

And may it overflow in marches and shouts

And clapping of hands,

In dancing and laughing and play,

And in a hundred smiles for me.

You are my joy, little one, little son,

And this day—this Christmas Day—

And forever,

I will love you, and love you, and love you,

In fondness and delight.

God and Country: The Dangers of American Patriotism in the Church

2010-11-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

Our church here in Calais, Maine, has traditionally been a very “patriotic” church. There are a large number of veterans among our members, and the congregation often makes its nationalistic pride felt through such means as our special Memorial Day service and a wall in the fellowship hall honoring our veterans. I’ve blogged here before about some of the hyper-patriotic attitudes that rub me the wrong way, but in this piece I want to focus on some basic pastoral concerns I have about congregations who hold American patriotism and Christian faith a little too tightly bound together.

First, a few clarifications at the outset. This isn’t a critique of our church as such—it’s entirely understandable, even laudable in some sense, to honor veterans and to love our country. If there’s a fault here, it’s not a major fault. It’s rather the simple difficulty that arises from conflating two loves which probably ought to be held separately. This is a matter I haven’t been swift to address, mostly because it’s largely innocuous in comparison to many of the other problems our American churches are dealing with right now. But our church is in the process of thinking through these issues of faith and patriotism at the moment, so for the sake of clarifying my position I thought I’d spell my concerns out here. (I don’t think anyone in my congregation actually reads this blog, but the content isn’t anything different than what I’ve expressed in conversations to various church members over the past few weeks.) The second clarification is simply to note that much of my reflection on this subject has been shaped (but not fully determined) by Anabaptist influences. Truth be told, real Anabaptists would be shocked and dismayed by the patriotism of our church—having Sunday School kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance, considering putting an American flag up outside the church, etc.—and while I am not quite as shocked at the potential syncretism, I do find it troubling.

To put the matter in theological terms, we Christians are the citizens of two very different kingdoms—the Kingdom of God, and our earthly societies. And I believe our allegiance to the Kingdom of God should be held quite free and separate of our political allegiances. Christ instructed us to give both kingdoms their due (“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”), but I don’t think he had in mind festooning church sanctuaries with Roman banners and emblems. Now, when I say that our allegiances should be held separately, I mostly mean that our political allegiances should not be allowed to invade our Christian faith. Our faith, however, should inform and influence and shape our political allegiances. Why? Because our citizenship in the Kingdom of God is the higher of the two loyalties. My identity as a Christian is eternal; my identity as an American is a passing affair. Some day my Americanism will simply be part of the beautiful diversity of the “melting pot” of heaven. I don’t expect that the USA will exist in the new heavens and the new earth for us to treasure and extol. But the church will persist. Christ’s kingdom will persist. So that’s where my highest loyalty lies. Thus my faith—my deepest identity—invades and determines my political allegiances, not the other way around. Our Christian identity is fundamental; our American identity is secondary.

And because the Kingdom of God is our highest loyalty, I consider it to be inappropriate to pledge allegiance to anything other than God himself in our churches. While the Pledge of Allegiance is fine and proper in other contexts, the church is an assembly of the Kingdom of God, and it is inappropriate for us to pledge allegiance to the US here in our churches. It is just as inappropriate as it would be for the whole US Senate to swear oaths to a Masonic order or their local Rotary clubs from the floor of the Senate chamber. The two things simply ought not to be put together, regardless of how appropriate or meritorious they may be elsewhere. My congregation loves and treasures the Boston Red Sox, but that doesn’t mean we should pin up Red Sox pennants around our sanctuary.

Thus I take my position against the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance in church, regardless of the circumstances, and against having an American flag flying outside on church property. (There is an American flag inside the sanctuary, but that’s such an old tradition that I’m not sure it’s worth the bother of dislodging it, and it’s happily tucked away into a corner sufficiently far away from the pulpit and altar.) The honoring of veterans in church is not quite as troubling. From my theological perspective, we must guard against such a practice being an extension of the cult of Americanism into the church, but as a celebration of community members who have made heroic sacrifices for the common good, I find it perfectly acceptable. (Although, to be fair, we ought to be doing the same thing for all those who make heroic sacrifices for the common good—policemen, firemen, teachers, social workers, etc.)

It’s worth remembering that Christ himself absolutely eschewed any taint of politicism or patriotism in his ministry. And his ministry, his example, is the foundation of the church. We should note that Christ could have easily encouraged patriotism in his church—his home country, after all, was Judea, populated by the chosen people of God. And everyone expected the Messiah to be a highly political, patriotic figure. Even one of his disciples was a Zealot, a Judean patriot. But although Jesus certainly focused his ministry on the Jews, there was no trace of patriotic nationalism whatsoever in what he did. In fact, he told Pilate quite plainly, “My kingdom is not of this world.” If Jesus himself, the Messiah, declined the patriotism that everyone thought would be proper and laudable for the Messiah, shouldn’t we be wary of conflating patriotism with faith in our own lives?

To make my case clearer, allow me to point out a few of the potential dangers of allying our American loyalties too closely with the practice of our faith:

First, and perhaps most troubling to me, it leads to a loss of the deep connection we should have with our brothers and sisters in Christ all around the world. We are more intimately connected (in a spiritual sense) with Christians in Swaziland than with our American neighbors, and our family loyalties should lie more strongly with the global church than with the USA. But in practice, this is seldom seen in American churches. During the Iraq war, all one heard about was the Americanist/political news. How many Christians showed any concern for the effects of the war on the native Iraqi Christian population? (In brief, the war was devastating for them, and several native church groups which stretched back more than a millennium and a half and constituted a decent minority of the Iraqi population a few years ago are now all but gone, forced to emigrate out because the war has raised Muslim/Christian tensions and made their ancient homeland unlivable.)

Second, it forces us to lose some of our prophetic voice against the abuses of the American system. Part of the mission of the church is to stand against injustice, but that can be hard to do if we conflate American patriotism and the faith. We too often shy away from denunciations of the ill effects of our materialism on other countries or from apologies for past American atrocities (against the Native Americans, for example), because such things make us sound “unpatriotic.” And so we mute the voice of the church.

Third, we tend to associate the enemies of America with the enemies of the church, and we lose the ability to love and pray for our enemies. Christ himself commanded us to love our enemies. But how many American Christians do you know who pray for the salvation of Osama bin Laden and the men of Al-Qaeda? According to Jesus, that’s what we should be doing, but our Americanism has blinded us to that calling. Far too many American Christians seem to believe that Muslims are our enemies, rather than the objects of our missional love and compassion.

Fourth, it leads to a tendency to associate American causes (especially wars) with righteous motives, whether or not that is the actual case. Fifth, it perpetuates the conflation of Americanism and Christianity in the eyes of other countries (much to the detriment of Christianity). When I was serving in missions in North Africa, I found it a fairly common assumption that Christianity was characterized by Hollywood, pornography, materialistic greed, and so on, mostly because Muslim countries associate the USA with Christianity, and we Americans (unfortunately) have only reinforced that assumption with our “God and country” syncretism. Sixth, it creates an unwelcoming environment in our churches for non-American Christians in our midst, especially those who might harbor justified resentment against America.

Seventh, it leads us to believe that certain American customs and morals are actually Christian, when in fact they are merely “optional” cultural add-ons to the Gospel or actually run against it (individualism, nuclear family systems, capitalism, “the American dream,” ways of dressing and eating, etc.), thus setting extra barriers in the way of experiencing the full force of the Gospel in our own lives and leading to an attitude of judgmentalism against those who practice the faith in a different cultural context. We are fostering the darkest kind of ethnocentrism—that which is fueled by ignorant religious opinion. And eighth, we run the risk of raising a generation who will be too subservient to American patriotism (the lesser of the two loyalties) when American interests run against the interests of the Kingdom of God.

These are just a few potential dangers, and I think they’re real enough to give us pause when we consider adding blatant shows of American patriotism to our churches.

Reflections on an Autumn Walk

2010-10-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Cascades of fire surround me,
Emblazoned on the trees.
As summer turns to winter,
All God’s verdure holds its breath
And then, brilliant as the setting sun,
Cries “Holy is the Lord!”
The emerald bounties of the woods
Turn softly, and turning thus,
Reflect the radiance of his throne.

Our God, our God, our God is a consuming fire,
And the whole earth is full of his glory.

I walk in sunlit fields of grace,
Down paths where peace has showered down,
In golden leaves, from Abba’s treetops.
The gulls splash in quiet shallows,
And on the age-old lumber of the docks
A cormorant dries its wings.
The robins—young and full of life,
Fly down to a string of pearled puddles,
And shake their feathers there.
Along the river the eagle watches,
Full fierce and proud in majesty,
While the cold northern waters
Sluice out through river-stones
And meet the bitter sea.

Our God, our God, our God is a consuming fire,
And the whole earth is full of his glory.

Amid these wild wonders walk I:
I the Image,
I the crown,
I the master of creation.
And I am humbled here.
Humbled to have seen the glory of our God
In tree and bird and stream,
And to know that he loves me.
He paints the world in breathless tones
Of wild and violent beauty,
And in this dance of peace and splendor,
He invites me in.

Our God, our God, our God is a consuming fire,
And the whole earth is full of his glory

Becoming Missional (and, apparently, very worried)

2010-10-16T15:42:00.000-07:00

This weekend I attended the annual convention of the American Baptist Churches of Maine (ABCOM). It was my first convention as a pastor within our covenant-community of churches, and it was good to meet some of my fellow-workers in the Lord. There was the usual mix of worship and business and socializing, and the main theme of the weekend centered around encouraging our churches toward becoming more missional. And the thought here is not simply to do more door-to-door evangelism, but to do community development programs that meet our neighbors at their point of need. A wonderful thing to aim for, certainly. It was inspiring and powerful, and a lot of good ideas and resources were offered for the equipping of the churches toward that end.

I give that positive introduction to mitigate what I’m about to say. I’m a “critical thinker” by nature, and I have a few critiques I wanted to address; but overall it was a very good convention. I should also explain at the outset, for those readers who live in other corners of the country or world, that Maine (and New England as a whole), is rapidly abandoning its traditional Christian faith and becoming widely and aggressively secular. Among my own generation (people in their twenties), I would estimate that 95% in the Calais area choose to have nothing to do with church.

So that’s the situation. But let’s get to my critique of the convention’s presentation of the missional church. The main thing that bothered me was the tone of it all. Making our churches more missional is all well and good. The church should indeed be reaching out beyond its own walls. Missions—including home missions—is in my blood. Nothing excites me more than the thought of the expansion of God’s kingdom, of revival and new believers. However, one of the characteristic downfalls of those who urge us on toward missional activity is that they sometimes tend to downplay the normal life of the church. And I heard some of that this weekend. I heard things like, “We need to stop trying to maintain what we have inside our walls, and reach out to those outside our walls.” One got the feeling that a few of the commentators wanted us to define church life in terms of its missionality. I wanted to say, “Hey, hold on here! Mission is important, but it’s not the only thing. Our worship to God is important. Our church meetings are important. The preaching of the Word of God is an act of wonder, a holy mystery. The nurture of the Body is important. The celebration of the sacraments and ordinances is important. What we do inside our church walls, week in and week out, is inherently valuable and worthwhile, no matter how many people are in the pews. Let’s be missional, yes! But let’s not talk trash about the beauties of congregational life and worship in doing it!” The truth is, mission is a vital part of being a church. But being a church is not reducible to mission alone. Churches should not be forced to feel themselves failures if their outreach goes unnoticed and their pews go empty. The worship of God and the mere metaphysical fact of being the church is extraordinary and inherently valuable.

Another characteristic downfall is that, in their attempts to motivate us toward action, missional speakers tend to become preachers of doom-and-gloom spiritual futurescapes. A large chunk of what I heard this weekend revolved around a sense of mourning for the rapidly-degenerating state of American culture and spirituality, especially among our young people. There was a palpable sense of desperation, as if we were the embattled few fighting for the last defense of the world. While it’s true that a lot depends on us and on our efforts, and that our culture is moving in a truly mournful direction of spiritual malaise, the tone of these meetings lacked something of the powerful, optimistic trust in the sovereignty of God that probably should be there.

We serve a God who is infinitely able to accomplish his will. He is in control, and we already know that the end of the story is an end of ultimate triumph and of the global celebration of the kingdom of God. Even if Maine of the 21^st century becomes a heathen wasteland, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not the end of God’s church. It’s happened before, in other places; it’s happening right now in Europe and Canada; and for all we know, in three hundred years the pendulum might well swing all the way back to another Great Awakening.

Here’s how I see it: I work and pray for revival, here and now, in Calais and in Maine as a whole. But unless God sovereignly begins to move through our efforts in a new and surprising way, it’s not going to happen. What will happen is this: the old, faithful generations will die off. My generation will continue their slide into churchlessness. Many small churches will have to close their doors. Popular culture will become even more suspicious and hostile to Christianity. (I don’t anticipate actual governmental persecution of Christians on anything close to the scale of the historical persecutions of the faith, partly because I respect the stability and fairness of the American system of government; but I suppose it is a distant possibility). Our culture will become more amoral and hedonistic than it already is, leading to a degeneration of public life. Vices like drugs and pornography will continue to abound; moral relativism will take hold. Public life will be largely ruled by popular media—TV, Internet, etc.

Into this rather bleak vision of New England’s future, the vast breakthrough of the Gospel in Latin America, Africa, China, and, God willing, India and the Middle East, will trickle back into the post-Christian West. The US and Europe will continue to become mission fields for the African and Chinese churches, and their vitality might just prove strong enough to swing the pendulum back in our spiritually-starved society. That’s what I think will happen. Faith may be waning in Maine right now, and it will probably wane further. But it’s waxing brilliant and strong elsewhere. God is still in control.

It’s an old story—it happened in all the areas which are now the Muslim heartlands, and which were previously the greatest bastions of Christian faith—Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor—their Christian communities saw the societies around them torn away from the Gospel and the true faith, and they had to adjust to life as a small, faithful remnant community in the midst of their non-Christian and anti-Christian neighbors. It might have seemed like a desperate situation, as if the survival of the Christian faith itself was in question. But, in an unforeseen development, the Gospel had penetrated and won the barbarian, pagan hinterlands of northern Europe and Russia, and now, after a millennium and a half, the Gospel is finally beginning a powerful return to its old home in the Middle East.

It reminds me of an old quote I’ve always liked. I can’t find the reference, but it draws on the image of a long battle-front wreathed in mist, and goes something like this: “The enemy is all around you, on every side. But do not despair. It may be that you lie entrenched in the last remaining pocket of enemy resistance, and beyond the mist and smoke, your fellows and your friends have already won the field.” And (since we’re in a quote-quoting mode), it comes down to this: “Have plenty of courage. God is stronger than the devil. We are on the winning side” (John Chapman).

It’s the mood of hand-wringing from our churches that gets me. Obviously we need to be working in mission and evangelism. But much of what I heard this weekend feels to me like the reaction of a church that had been triumphant in its culture for a long while, and had grown to assume that that situation was the status quo. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize what an abnormal situation it truly was. And when the regular course of history returned—that is to say, when the church began to become again a despised, marginalized group of spiritual sojourners with little influence on the popular culture—they didn’t know how to deal with it. Spiritually speaking, we’re returning toward the sort of society that Jesus apparently expected us to live in—hostile to spiritual truth, in which the church would be a faithful remnant, a witnessing, prophetic community. God may bring great revivals, but let us not despair if he does not. We are not in an unusual situation if we find that people don’t want to hear about Jesus. Rather, we are in a biblical situation—the very situation that Jesus and the apostles expected. All we can do is be faithful, proclaim the Word, build up our brothers, celebrate the grace of God in the ordinances, live transparently in the love of Christ, and let him do the mysterious, wonderful work of bringing the harvest-fields to the point of readiness again. Christ is victorious; he has already won. Let us be faithful and obedient, trust and rejoice in him, and take what comes.

This seems to me to be the biblical attitude. Paul and the other apostles exemplified a life of outward ministry. But—interestingly enough—virtually nowhere in all their written instructions to the churches (the epistles) do they ever implore us to be active in evangelism. And to a modern evangelical, that ought to seem like a strange omission, given the way we harp on it. But perhaps Paul and the apostles knew that it was really God’s work, far more than it is ours. We, the church, will do what we can do, and we leave the rest to him. He will win the day. But it may not come here and now, in our towns and in our lifetimes. Paul certainly did not live to see Rome and Corinth and Ephesus come to the point of the majority converting to faith in Christ. It did happen, but it was some four or five hundred years later. Paul simply did the work of evangelism, encouraged the church to live lovingly and gracefully, and entrusted the rest to God. And he knew God’s plan would prevail in the end. The truth is, we may actually be living in the days of the greatest harvest of all, given the way Christianity is exploding around the world. We just happen to be in a distant little corner of the world (yes, it’s true, America isn’t actually the center of everything) where our faith is receding at the moment.

It will be interesting to see the adjustments that our churches make in the coming years. I was the youngest pastor at the convention. I might have been the only person younger than thirty there (and it wasn’t just pastors; laypeople had been invited as delegates too). There were only two or three in their thirties; a handful in their forties. I would estimate that 95% of the attendees were over the age of fifty, and the majority sixty and older. As those generations pass over into their blessed rest in the coming decades, smaller churches will probably have to close their buildings and consolidate together. And we will have to adjust to life as a faithful witness rather than the life as a leading voice in the public sphere which we have up till now enjoyed in the US. I hope it doesn’t go that way. I hope our efforts at home missions here and now will be wildly successful, sparking revivals on every side. But I suspect it will continue on its current trend for awhile yet. It’s not a heartening thought, but such is the history of the church. And God is still in control.

Is the USA the best country in the world?

2010-09-09T11:56:00.001-07:00

There are usually two responses that come to this question from Americans (most non-Americans would probably add a strong negative as a third possibility): "Of course it is," and, the answer I would like to defend, "What a ridiculously unanswerable and pointless question!" To those who, like me, lean toward the latter of these responses, it might seem bizarre to devote a blog-column to the topic. But, strangely enough, there are a lot of Americans--perhaps the majority--who would actually, quite blithely, give the first answer.

I've run into this thought a few times in the past couple weeks. One was in the course of an ordinary conversation with a friend, who asserted, quite out of the blue, that the US was the best country in the world, as if that were an undisputed fact. My second encounter was the more interesting one--a Gospel music singer was performing at our church, and stated how proud he was to live in "the best country on earth," and then proceeded to have us all stand and sing "I'm Proud to Be an American." This is perhaps not all that surprising, considering the all-too-common syncretism between Christianity and American patriotism these days. But the interesting thing is that we, as a church in a border-town, actually attract a fair number of Canadians to our concerts. I would estimate that at least a quarter of the audience that night was Canadian, and I suspect they might not have all agreed quite so quickly that the US was the best country on earth.

Now before we begin looking a little more deeply into this question, I should pause and reaffirm my own patriotism. Having been influenced by Anabaptist theology and practice, I am, perhaps, a bit more cautious than most American Christians about brash displays of patriotic fervor, especially in connection with the church, but that doesn't mean that I don't love my country. I do. The USA is extraordinary--in its history, its system of government, its natural wonders, and its people. I am proud to be an American, proud to be a citizen of what might very well be the noblest political experiment ever carried out on a national level. But that doesn't mean that I can't be honest about my country, that I can't mourn its failings, that I can't, indeed, even be ashamed of it sometimes. Loving my country doesn't mean that I need to somehow convince myself that it is superior to all other nations.

While I am proud of the US for many reasons, there have been seasons of shame in my relationship with my country. I was working in northern Sudan when the news about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. And in the face of confusion and anger from the Arabs around me, I was ashamed of what my countrymen had done. Now, clearly, that was an isolated incident that did not reflect the true character of the majority of our armed forces. But there are other things I'm ashamed of as an American. I'm ashamed of our legacy of slavery and racial discrimination. I'm ashamed of what we did to the Native Americans. I'm sometimes ashamed of the often unreflective and anti-intellectual character of the American public. I'm ashamed of the reckless plunge my generation is taking into blind hedonism. And I'm also ashamed to see too much arrogance in our patriotism. It is one thing to love our country--deeply, passionately, as we should; to applaud her merits and seek to pass on her distinctive virtues. But it is quite another thing to claim in the face of the world that we are the best.

Well, what do people mean when they call this the best country in the world? Some, perhaps, merely throw out the phrase unreflectively, as an expression of their loyalty and personal preference for the US. In most cases, it is merely a statement of personal opinion. But sometimes one gets the sense that the people who say this mean it in a metaphysical sense--that truly, in the grand scheme of things, no other country can measure up to the USA.

It's worth asking what that assertion even means. What qualifications go into determining the best country on earth? There are thousands upon thousands of variables you could take into consideration. Most of the studies which try to answer that question in an unbiased way, usually going off of standard-of-living statistics and polls on personal happiness, end up pointing towards one of the Scandinavian countries as the best (Finland was #1 in the most recent survey I've seen; the US #11). Honestly, though, I suspect that most of the people who make the assertion that the US is the best have never been in more than one or two other countries for any extended period of time. None of them, certainly, have lived for awhile in every single country, which is presumably what you would need to do to make such an assertion fairly. And even so, the list of possible qualifications is endless. Is the US a wealthy nation? Others are wealthier. Is the US a happy and contented nation? Other nations are happier and more contented. Do Americans show moral courage? So do citizens of other countries. Is America founded on noble principles? Yes, but there are other countries out there with constitutions just as lofty as our own.

There are, of course, some areas where Americans have dominated the playing field. We often top the charts in military strength, economics, and charitable giving (though the last of these is possibly offset, in a moral sense, by the overall materialism of our culture--people of other countries don't always give as much money as we do, but they may well be more generous and hospitable than we are; this is particularly true of the citizens of Middle Eastern countries, for whom hospitality is one of the highest rules of life). But we also come close to topping the charts in some rather less-than-noble categories: abortions, teenage pregnancies, suicides, and pornography production are a few examples. All this to say, it would be very challenging to come up with a set of distinctive American qualities that would wipe out all the competition for the "best country on earth" title.

I think, though, that another factor comes into play for people who assert that this is the best country in the world. They often seem to tie the claim to a religious/historical argument--something along the lines of God providentially choosing and shaping our nation. It's often stated by these same folks that America was founded on Christian principles; and the feeling is that the US has always stood up for what is good and right and true and just. (It should be noted at this point that many other countries would certainly dissent and could easily enumerate some of the more ignoble moments in American history.) While there is some truth to these ideas (the Founding Fathers were, certainly, deeply influenced by Christian ideals and moral values, and we have, overall, been a much more religious country than others in the industrial West), it's a hard case to make conclusively. While God is certainly not impassive towards the USA and its legacy, I don't think our somewhat-checkered history bears out the claim that we are a chosen nation, specially blessed, or a "city on a hill." It seems to me from Scripture that God loves all nations (yes, even the "bad" ones) and longs for them all to come into loving relationship with him. And one could rattle off a handful of nations that might just as easily be considered to have a special place in God's heart--Israel and Palestine (yes, both), El Salvador (hard to say no to a country that's named after you), the Vatican, and China (with probably more Christians living there than the entire population of the US), just to name a few. That's a bit tongue-in-cheek of course; but at the heart of the matter I think we would all agree that God is more concerned with the people who make up a nation than with the outward political form of the nation itself.

My main question to those who assert the primacy of the US would be, Why are we even bothering to make this claim? Who cares (except our own fervent patriots)? What does it matter if we live in the best or the second best or the hundredth-best nation? Let's do what we can to make our country even better than it is, regardless of what other countries do or where they sit on the scale of things. We have a fine, wonderful country. We have a lot to be proud of. But it is possible to love our country without putting other countries down. It is possible to love ourselves and love our neighbors, too. God bless the USA; yes, amen! But God bless Canada, too; God bless Russia; God bless China; God bless Iraq; God bless Zimbabwe. We are only the best if we love the best; if we love our neighbors as God loves them. Let's strive to that end.

"Here we are, you and I..."

2010-08-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

I've begun reading Aelred of Rievaulx's classic work, Spiritual Friendship, written in the Middle Ages as a Christian remix of Cicero's On Friendship (which I read earlier this year). Perhaps the profoundest line I've found so far is the simple beginning of the dialogue, where Aelred says to his interlocutor: "Here we are, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst."

It is the nature of Christian friendship that the union of two people should lead them into the presence of God. Reflecting back on my own life, I can say that there has seldom been anything so spiritually formative for me as my seasons of deep, rich Christian friendship. Bible study, prayer, silence and solitude, service--these are all essentials, of course. But nothing has quite made them come alive like the intimate presence of others. When living in close community and friendship with other believers, my prayer, study, and service takes on greater power. Friendship lends a practical impetus to my spiritual formation--I tend to care more about what sort of person I am becoming when I am living in close communion with others--and it also lends a direction and purpose to that formation: the deepening of our fellowship and the active outworking of my faith in practical, relational ways. Christian friendship becomes both a source of fuel for spiritual formation and one of the goals of spiritual formation.

In the past few weeks I've been making more of a concerted effort to spend intentional time with Rachel. Instead of turning on the TV to watch the Red Sox in the evening, we've taken up the habit of reading out loud together. Right now we're reading through a collection of Dorothy Sayers' short stories about her detective hero, Lord Peter Wimsey. It has been a wonderful time to slow down together after putting Josiah to bed, to share a quiet journey into a world of imagination. It is interactive and creative (far more so than watching TV), and has drawn us significantly into a deeper experience of closeness these past few weeks. The time we spend in good, simple conversation--about life, relationships, God, etc.--has expanded since we started intentionally taking time to be together in the evenings. And, along the way, I've found my desire for God and for a life of holiness has expanded in corresponding measure.

There's something about friendship which, at its best, should draw us ever deeper into the presence of God. Our relationships with others and our relationship with God are inextricably linked. Our relationality is a reflection of the Trinitarian relationality of God, etched into our nature as an image of His fundamental nature. And when we pursue that relationality in godly ways, the promise of Jesus becomes manifest: "Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am also." We believe that Christ is spiritually present among all gatherings of his people, and I can testify that his presence is almost tangible in the quiet spaces of a deep and abiding friendship.

As a pastor, I interact with all kinds of people. One group that I'm particularly fond of is the sort of people who are "fixers" and "visionaries"--who are constantly seeing the problems with the way the church is now, and how we could be making it better. How can we bring in more people? How can we reach out more effectively to the community? Aren't there more programs we can be running? We need people who ask these questions--they keep us from a slothful acceptance of mediocrity. But we also need people like Aelred, who tell us to slow down and examine the nature of our church fellowship. Aelred points us away from seeing merely the problems and potentials of the church--he tells us that the church is extraordinary, here and now, because it is the union of the children of God and Christ is in its midst. No matter what problems might be present, when Christians gather together in the name of Jesus, that is a momentous and fundamentally important event, and it is endued and saturated with the presence of Christ himself. We must not forget that the mandate of the church points both outward and inward, and that it is a part of our mission to develop rich relationships of fellowship, mentoring, and friendship. For where Christians love each other, there is an active image to the watching world of the love and nature of Christ.

Thoughts from "Acts of Faith"

2010-07-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading Philip Caputo's titanic novel Acts of Faith (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), and it sparked some reflections that are worth setting out here on the blog. The book itself is long--nearly 700 dense pages of intricate, beautiful prose--but it's definitely worth the read. I've been working through it for a couple months. I first picked it up because it deals with one of my areas of deep interest--Sudan, and the ongoing human rights crisis there. Caputo's novel, well-researched and obviously reflecting some personal connections with that corner of the world, is as good an introduction to the local cultures and the overall tone and flavor of northeast Africa as I've ever seen (and to be able to do that in a good novel, rather than, say, an anthropology textbook, is remarkable).

Although I delved into the world of the book mostly because it brought my memories and affections back to Africa, I ended up playing witness to an epic tale. It takes awhile for the plot to really get moving--not until halfway through the book--but the ending of the story is a rich tragedy filled with characters of Shakespearean proportions. It aligns most closely with Joseph Conrad and his Heart of Darkness--the escalating and horrific madness of someone who ought to be a true hero, and the unspeakable magnitude of pain wrought by human evil and stupidity.

But what I really want to do for this blog post is deal with a couple quotes that come near the end of the book, in a series of reflections on the tragic flaws of two leading characters. While I don't know if Caputo is a Christian (I suspect he isn't), I tend to agree with his overall assessment. Take this quote from p.648: "He had broken faith with the best that was in him and with the humanity he professed to serve. A malevolent voice had whispered a summons; he'd answered. Anyone who does not acknowledge the darkness in his nature will succumb to it."

We as Christians, and particularly as American Christians, I think, tend to turn a blind eye sometimes to the truths of our theology--and, in this case, to what is known as "the depravity of man." We still have a difficult time showing anything other than a facade of happiness and peace when we come to church. (And, of course, some of us may be genuinely happy and peaceful most weeks, but the point is that in many churches, we have difficulty showing our pain when our own sin is gutting the joy from our lives.) We are surprised, even shocked, when religious leaders are discovered in the midst of terrible sins. But the truth of the matter is that if we're honest with ourselves, we know that the roots of evil plunge deep into our own hearts. We aren't all tempted toward the same sins, but we all have areas of rebellion and selfish sin in our hearts. The two main tragic characters in Acts of Faith are brought down by errors in judgment that begin as very small things--in one's case, it began with lying and a passion for personal success in his business; in another's, it began with a lack of contentment for the normal course of her life and a deeply selfish need for recognition by others. In both cases, these small failings led to bigger things--murder, embezzlement, conspiracy, illegal gun-running, and willful participation in the slave trade. We would be wise not to assume that we are out of reach of certain temptations. I know that I am capable of deep, shocking evil in certain areas of my life, and so I keep up a constant guard against them. And while I am disappointed at times in the failings of those around me, I am seldom shocked. Humans are capable of unspeakable evil. And Christianity is the only religion that really adequately explains this paradox of human nature--how deeply we yearn for justice and righteous living, and how we never seem to live up to that ideal.

A second quote comes from p.663: "The bulb glows undimmed by the cloak of insects--the katydids have fled the dawn. Like belief, Fitzhugh thinks. Conviction will blind you if it is not shaded by doubt." This one is a bit trickier for Christians, but I think there's wisdom here. I'm not going to start advocating that we begin on a mental foundation of skepticism that calls us to continually question everything we believe in. However, we would do well to abolish the stigma that doubt holds in many Christian circles. Different people are wired in different ways, and for some people, doubt can be a tremendously valuable tool in testing, reworking, and exploring the depths of their faith. Further, I don't think that the popularly-held dichotomoy between faith and doubt is accurate. True faith will wrestle with doubt now and again; mine certainly has; and that doesn't make our faith any less faithful. (The other unfortunate aspect of that popularly-held dichotomy between faith and doubt is that it leads people to assume that faith must be some sort of "blind leap," unsupported by evidence or thoughtful analysis.) In the famous story of "doubting Thomas," where the disciple decides to doubt the truth of the Resurrection until he can see Jesus for himself, we often end up looking down at Thomas for his lack of faith. He has become for us the weakest character in the Resurrection narrative, displaying his failings for all to see. However, it strikes me that in that story, although Jesus does seem to reprimand Thomas a little bit for his doubt, he also meets Thomas in the midst of his doubt and offers the proof he seeks. Thomas isn't cast away; rather, his faith is affirmed by bringing his doubts to the Lord. And sometimes that's what we need--to be honest with ourselves, and to let God meet us where we are.

In Acts of Faith, however, it's not the conviction that the characters have towards their religion that brings them to their downfall. It's their fervent conviction in their own actions, their own ideas. They, like so many of us, assume that their assessment of the situation is the true one, that the course of action they've decided on is necessary and right. One of the first steps on the road to wisdom is precisely this--not to let your convictions about your own opinions blind you to the possibility that the truth actually lies elsewhere. In a word, remember that you are finite. There are too many people nowadays who are willing to argue aggressively for their own opinions, as if their opinions actually accomplished something or mattered to anyone besides themselves. (That sounds a little harsh, I know, but we've all met people like that--in fact, most of us have been people like that at points in our lives.) This is why I don't often find myself arguing politics with people. Politics, like anything else involving humans, is incredibly complex and unpredictable, and "the right answers" are always elusive. But those who like to argue politics often seem to believe like they've figured it all out. By contrast, I know I haven't figured it all out. I keep my convictions shaded in doubt. I have my opinions and leanings when it comes to political issues, to be sure--I even have things that I passionately believe in. But I also know that on some points I might be wrong, and that even if my leanings are right, I probably don't know the right way to go about pursuing them. So I don't usually make a good sparring partner for political debate. But the point is that we would be wise in many areas of our lives to keep ourselves shaded with doubt. Obviously, though, it's not a good idea to let doubt immobilize you. But when you take those steps that will shape your life, at least entertain the possibility that you may actually be ignorant of the best course of action; that in itself will inject a little bit of grace into everything you do, and hopefully make you a little more diligent in seeking wisdom and understanding from sources outside yourself.

As the old saying goes, "Suffer fools gladly--they may be right." In short, learn humility. I don't know everything. I will never know everything. So I've learned to lean on others. My first instinct is always to look elsewhere for wisdom--to Scripture, to the church fathers, to the proven classics of human art and thought. I know that opinions shaped in ignorance aren't worth much, so I draw from the deep wells of old wisdom before I try to help others on their journey towards living rightly.

This novel reinforced a wonderful (albeit humbling) message, one that we would all do well to think about: Don't underestimate your capacity for evil or for ignorance.

The Beauty of Nature

2010-07-02T07:18:00.001-07:00

Over the past couple weeks, during which time we took a little vacation down to Lake Mokoma, PA, I've been enjoying the restive beauty of the natural world. The beginning of summer is such a delightful time of year, especially in the eastern woodlands. Everything is green and rich with life, and merely being in the middle of it lends a feeling of vibrancy to the soul. One of the things I love about living in Maine is the woods. I've always loved them--the deep, silent beauty of trees and trails that stand apart from the works of man, giving us vast retreats into God's creation. Here in Calais, we're blessed to have not only the forests near at hand, but also the coast--the cold northern Atlantic, and the rugged majesty of Maine's headlands. The quote for this week is from a work by an Eastern Orthodox monk/hermit, "On the Mountains of the Caucasus" (I don't think it has been translated into English in its entirety--the excerpt below was quoted in Bishop Alfeyev's The Mystery of Faith). This passage follows after a story about the author looking out over a mountain vista, and it describes the feeling of encountering the ineffable when we look at nature's beauty, and being shaped by that experience for the life to come:

"So it was that we sat in silence, looking in amazement and in holy rapture sustaining our hearts, experiencing those exalted moments of the inner life when one feels the closeness of the invisible world, enters into sweet communion with it and listens to the terrible presence of the Godhead. It is at such moments, replete with sacred feelings, that one forgets all earthly things. The heart is warmed like wax before the fire and becomes receptive to impressions of the celestial world. It burns with the purest of love for God, and one tastes the bliss of inner enrichment; one hears an inner voice whispering that it is not for earthly vanities but for participation in eternity that the short days of our earthly existence are given."

There's a fair philosophical argument to be made that our capacity to see and appreciate beauty is a pointer to our special creation as humans; and that our delight in the beauty of nature leads us into a deeper delight in the beauty of God. And we believe that all this beauty around us, created by the hand of God, will not ultimatly be lost to us, but will be restored and transformed into what it was always meant to be--ever more beautiful, suffused by the radiance of God himself when he dwells in the new heavens and the new earth. In the words of the great Cappadocian Father, Gregory of Nazianzus:

"Why am I faint-hearted in my hopes? Why do I behave like a mere creature of the day? I await the voice of the archangel, the last trumpet, the transformation of the heavens, the transfiguration of the earth, the liberation of the elements, the renovation of the universe."

God Our Father

2010-06-18T08:52:00.001-07:00

Below is a little piece I just put into the church newsletter, so I thought I would post it here as well:

As I write this, Father’s Day is nearly upon us—my first Father’s Day as a father. It’s wonderful that our society has set apart days specifically for the honoring of family relationships. And fathers are worthy of special honor; not because we always do everything right (we don’t), but because good fathers are one of the most poignant pictures we have of the God we serve. When God chose to reveal himself to humanity, especially in the New Testament, he revealed himself as “Father.” Or, to get a little closer to the original word Jesus used, God reveals himself as Abba—“Daddy.” We’ll often refer to God in our prayers as “Heavenly Father,” which is all well and good, but it makes God sound distant and removed. I rather prefer the way that West African Christians refer to Him in their prayers and songs: “Papa God.”

Becoming a father this past year has led me to reflect anew on the Fatherhood of God. The process of watching Josiah grow has been a delight. And more than anything else, my relationship with Josiah has reminded me of the depths of God’s love for us. Josiah isn’t even really aware yet of the love I have for him, or what that love means—the affection, the commitment, the joy that is part of that love. And I think we, too, are often sadly unaware of the reality of God’s love for us—of the affection, commitment, and joy that he feels when he looks at us. The Bible tells us that God delights in us, that he rejoices over us with singing. And even when we mess up and fall back into our sins, God’s love does not waver. Just as with Josiah—he can frustrate me at times, but my love for him is never, never called into question. And just as I love Josiah in the midst of his weaknesses and failings, so God loves us in the midst of our weaknesses and failings.

There was one phase of Josiah’s growth, a few months back, where he was just starting to recognize faces. I would hold him in my lap, and he would stare around the room. His gaze would wander up to the ceiling, over to the lights, down to the paintings on the wall; and then, every once in a while, he would look straight into my eyes and smile. And those moments were an unspeakable joy. Again, it’s the same with God. He is always holding us, though we’re so often unaware of his presence. And then, every so often, we cast a glance toward him—maybe a prayer or a song or just a passing thought—and he delights in that moment. Oh, that we could learn to look his way more often! Just like a good father, God desires to be with us, to carry us, to wrap his arms around us. Just like a good father, he can be frustrated and disappointed by our failures and our sins—but because we are his children, bought with the blood of Christ, he never disavows his love for us. In the words of a Michael Card song, “He loves you with passion and without regret; he cannot love more and he will not love less.”

As we celebrate Father’s Day and look towards summer, spend some time with your Papa God, and revel in his love.

Quote of the Week

2010-06-11T08:01:00.002-07:00

"If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?...A book must be like an ice axe to break the frozen sea within us." - Franz Kafka

Here we have a poignant exhortation to read good books. I might not go quite as far as Kafka in discounting the worth of a good "pleasure read," but his point is well taken--books have the potential to change our lives (far more potential than most other media, like TV or the Internet), so choose your books well. Read something that is time-tested and full of wisdom. (And, of course, the best choice of all is the Bible itself, the one book that has changed more lives than any other. It is the book that always wakes us, that always shatters our frozen seas, because it is God himself doing the hammering.) Here are just a few authors who have been "ice axes" for me (in no particular order): C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Thomas a Kempis, Julian of Norwich, Francois Fenelon, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Oswald Chambers, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, just to name a few. There are others, too. My own passions and interests tend towards devotional spirituality and ethics (moral philosophy), which is where most of these authors fall. And while I enjoy studying theology and history and culture and ministry technique, these areas don't seize my attention and captivate my imagination in quite the same way as devotional spirituality and ethics. But whatever your passions are, there are good "ice axe" books out there for you. Seek them out, and start hammering away.

Thoughts on Aging (and the Quote of the Week)

2010-06-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

This week I’ve been thinking about aging. Not that I’m feeling particularly old—at 27, I’m far younger than most of my parishioners, not to mention my fellow pastors in the Calais area. But it’s been on my mind, partly because of our Bible study in 1 Peter, that touched on the subject in 1:23-24, and partly because of a conversation I had with some fellow ministers this week. I was introducing our local Catholic priest to one of the other Baptist ministers, and in the course of mentioning that he and I had gone to the same high school, I added: “At different times, of course.” The Baptist pastor laughed and told me I was “throwing the priest under the bus,” as if pointing out our age difference was a way of shaming him. I hadn’t meant it that way at all, but it got me to thinking about the strange cult of youth in our American culture.

It’s no secret that we Americans worship youth. We fight wrinkles and other signs of aging with every new technique and technology we can think of—creams, poisons, surgeries, and so on—until rather than looking like a natural 60-year-old, some of our celebrity 60-year-olds look like freakish, pseudo-human 40-year-olds. We pine away for the lost days of our youth. We watch movies about idealized young people and their adventuresome way of life. We sequester our elders away in nursing homes and care facilities that, while taking good care of them, also serve the purpose of removing them from the daily rotation of our communal lives. Our culture is driven ever more powerfully by the market interests of teenagers (and, increasingly, pre-teens). We glorify those attributes associated with youth—hyperactive sexuality and athleticism—while paying no attention to the classical attributes of old age—wisdom, virtue, and respect. We seldom think of death; and when we do, we claim that we’d rather go out in a blaze of glory than in a long, downhill slide into senility and weakness. We consider it an offense against our dignity that we are obligated to lose our physical and mental prowess before we die. Our culture has a deep-seated dread of aging. We Americans agree with the words of one current popular song, “I want to be forever young.”

Contrast this attitude with the perspective of Seneca (our quote of the week): “Moving to one’s end through nature’s own gentle process of dissolution—is there a better way of leaving life than that?” (Letter XXVI) This is a rhetorical question, and the answer Seneca is shooting for is “No.” The slow, gentle dissolution involved in the natural process of aging is, according to Seneca, the best way to die.

In the vast majority of traditional cultures around the world (including the cultures of the Biblical world), old age is not something to be feared, but something to be venerated. Elders (rather than teenagers) are at center-stage of the culture. They are sources of wisdom and guidance, leaders of family groups, worthy of constant respect. Aging and death are viewed as natural parts of the human life-cycle.

The slow process of aging is helpful both for us and those around us. For us, it teaches us humility—that strength, beauty, and sharpness of mind were gifts of God to us, not permanent possessions worthy of our preening pride. It teaches us dependence on God, rather than the willful independence of those who can do everything for themselves. It teaches us the futility of the hurried pace of modern life, forcing us to live slowly and gently on the earth. And it reminds us that we are not our own; that we belong in community and need other people to help us through life. We come into this life unable to care for ourselves, recipients of tremendous love; and we leave in much the same way. This says to me that that is the natural condition of mankind—to be leaning on each other, to grow in the strength of family and friendship, and not to be ashamed of the fact that we need each other.

The process of aging is also helpful for those around us. It teaches those same lessons to the younger members of our society, if they are open to hearing them. It gives them the opportunity to extend love and care and respect, to be forced beyond a selfish way of living. And the slow process of aging is really a merciful transition for the family we leave behind—rather than having their beloved friend ripped away at the height of his powers, they are able to prepare themselves for the coming of death by walking with him down the long road of age and weakness.

And, of course, we Christians know that this is not the end. While God has ordered death, even in the midst of our fallen state, to be a blessing to us in these many ways, it is still a tragedy. We know, deep down, that it ought not to be this way. It ought not to be the case that the people we know and love are gone forever. And this deep, instinctual feeling that something is inherently wrong with death is one of the pointers towards the truth of eternal life. As C.S. Lewis argued, the fact that we are hungry for food indicates that something to meet that need actually exists (and food does exist). The fact that we desire sexual intimacy points to the existence of such a thing as sex. And the fact that we long for immortality points us toward believing that there is such a thing as immortality. As good and as healthy as the natural aging, dying process can be, it is not the end of the story. And the lessons we learn in age, here and now, will lend an even richer beauty to the immortal, imperishable life that we will one day receive.

It seems to me that the church is one of the few remaining sanctuaries in our society for this cultural practice of honoring the elderly. I’m blessed to be living in a small, rural-area town, where older folks still hold tremendous cultural influence. And I’m blessed to be in a church that honors its older members and harnesses their gifts and passions for the ministry of the church (in fact, in the case of our church, we’d be in really tough shape without the active ministry-contributions of the elderly!). I was blessed to grow up in extended families and churches which incorporated all age groups, and I learned to love and honor my elders, to respect their tremendous power and potential in the Kingdom of God.

With that rich experience of blessing in my background, I intend to grow old gracefully, to abstain from idle complaints about my failing health, to add to my wrinkles by smiling often on sunny days, and to be a burden of blessing to those who will have to care for me in my debility. I will aim for constant personal and spiritual improvement, so that I am looking forward to my best days and my most effective ministry in the latter days of my life. I will cultivate the incomparable treasure of wisdom, so that the strength of my character in my final years will be so rich and powerful that I would never think of trading it for the mere physical prowess of my younger years. I will embrace the “gentle process of dissolution,” and not bow to the lie that youth must be the best and highest time of life.

Aging is not the enemy. The way we sinfully covet a different phase of life—that is the real enemy.

Quotes of the Week

2010-05-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more gems from Seneca:

"As it is with a play, so it is with life: what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is." (Letter LXXVII)

"For a life spent viewing all the variety, the majesty, the sublimity in things around us can never succumb to ennui--the feeling that one is tired of being, of existing, is usually the result of an idle and inactive leisure." (Letter LXXVIII)

"In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes." (Posidonius, qtd. in Letter LXXVIII)

Quote of the Week: The Dark Side of Church History

2010-05-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

This week's quote comes from Paul Johnson's A History of Christianity. I include it here not so much as an inspiration or an uplifting thought, but rather as a challenge to certain over-idealized ways of thinking about Christian history that so often abound today:

"Christianity began in confusion, controversy and schism and so it continued. A dominant orthodox Church, with a recognizable ecclesiastical structure, emerged only very gradually and represented a process of natural selection--a spiritual survival of the fittest. And, as with such struggles, it was not particularly edifying."

When one reads histories of Christianity, they usually fall into two camps: either those by non-Christian historians which often make the impression that the author has an ax to grind against the church, or those by Christian historians who sometimes tend to oversimplify and gloss over the more unsightly details of the story in favor of their own particular versions of Christianity. Paul Johnson's work is different--he writes as a faithful Christian, but is unafraid to show the seamier side of our history. As such, it's one of the most challenging and insightful histories of the church I've read. I don't always agree with all of his conclusions (such as his inference that Paul's group was actually in direct opposition with James and the Jerusalem church community; or that Galatians and Acts 15 record very different perspectives on the same struggle and events), but his overview of history is worth considering nonetheless.

I feel that his rather unappealing view of Christian history is of immense usefulness, because our history (especially the history of the early and patristic church) is often subject to misuse by any Christian movement that seeks an added dose of credibility. (Interesting, isn't it, that even we evangelical Protestants, who pride ourselves on "sola Scriptura," still make heavy use of the support of early church traditions in favor of our own particular ways of doing church). Not long ago I picked up a recent book by two well-known proponents of the "house church"/"organic church" movement, and it was particularly egregious in this regard--twisting early church history to fit their arguments, ignoring some of the most prominent church fathers whose writings directly contradict their arguments, and relying on some of the most specious scholarship I've seen, all to make their point--that we ought to meet in home-churches, because that's what the early church did. Or take the example of the Anabaptist tradition (of which I'm overwhelmingly fond, and, as a Baptist, have some roots there myself), which often marks the Constantinian revolution as the downfall of the church, and in so doing, unfortunately, puts a pressure of holiness, peace, and brotherhood on the first three centuries of the faith which the actual historical record cannot measure up to. Even the renewed "ancient faith" interest that's sprouting up all over evangelical Christianity (to my great delight) sometimes wanders into this error. It tends to idealize the heroes and the statements of faith produced by the early and patristic churches, without doing the hard historical research of wrestling with the fact that many of our early heroes were not necessarily the best of men, and that the great creeds were both products of and producers of immense schisms, controversies, and even downright hatred and abuse among early Christians. And these are all just within the evangelical camp. The idealistic lens through which many Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians view their early history often has nothing at all to do with actual history, but much more to do with the centuries-later traditions of those earliest memories. Not only are the "saints" of the early church sometimes a bit more morally specious than they're presented to us, but there was apparently a massive disconnect between the high standard set in the writings of the Fathers (most of whom were bishops or other high church officers) and the behavior of the laity and lower clergy. This is a point well made in Robin Lane Fox's Pagans and Christians--bizarre spiritualities, sexual promiscuity, greediness, and violence were everywhere evident in the early church. I suppose, after reading 1 Corinthians, that that shouldn't come as a surprise. But because we like to idealize our history, it does. (And for those who prefer to idealize the Reformation-period and its heroes rather than the early church, the same principles apply, and, I'm sure, some of the same surprises will be waiting for us if we dig below the surface in our historical research.)

If we are lovers of history (as I am), and if we believe that the Holy Spirit has continually worked through his church in all eras, then we should do ourselves the credit of making our historical assessments wisely, neither throwing it all out the window as irrelevant (which many Baptists, sad to say, are prone to do), or embracing it in glowing, naive idealism as in the examples I listed above. There is, of course, a lot to be proud of in Christian history. There is a tremendous wealth of wisdom and experience from which to draw. But let's be wise about how we do it--the early Christians were just human beings, as we are. Some of our dearest heroes from those days may disappoint us. But I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that their lives don't quite measure up with their writings. That's how it is with all of us--we know what we ought to do, but we have a hard time doing it. The best of Christians has a hard time practicing what he preaches.

But this should give us some consolation. We like to terrify ourselves by convincing each other that we're at a stage in church history where "the church is in crisis!" But truth be told, the church has always been in crisis. It has never lived up to its ideals. And we're all, as one community throughout history, wrestling against our sinfulness as we try to follow Jesus faithfully. Let's be wise about how we assess ourselves and about how we assess our fellow Christians, wherever they may fall on the timeline of our history. And let's strive to give ourselves a little grace even while we continue to press on toward our ideals.

Day-Challenges

2010-05-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

In the post I just put up ("Quote of the Week"-- you might do well to read that one first), I mentioned my new practice of Day-Challenges. I thought I'd share them with you; maybe they'll be an inspiration to someone. The incentive for these challenges came mostly from a sense of dissatisfaction with the mediocre sort of life I was living on my own time. It was too easy to get in a rut of coming home from work and settling on the couch to eat snacks and watch TV all the time. So these challenges are a remedy for that--all things that I want to be doing, and most of them things that I'll enjoy, but which take self-discipline and intentionality. (And it should be noted that these are all above and beyond the normal disciplines that I work into my everyday life--prayer, Bible study, time spent playing with Josiah, exercise, and so on. Those things aren't mentioned in this list, because I'm trying to do them every day, not just once in a while.) These day-challenges are things that take more work than TV, but which will enrich my life infinitely more. As I said in the other post, I pick one each day to do. Some are things that I really ought to be doing anyway; some are focused directly on counteracting my own tendencies of going it alone and shunning social contacts; some are purely whimsical exercises to keep me out of my comfort zone in a fun sort of way (see #34); some will be good experiences that will stretch me; some focus on my talents; and others focus on practices that I'm not particularly good at, but which would be good for me to plug away at. Most of them are aimed at my personal situation, but feel free to borrow any of them if this is something you want to do too. But here they are, anyway. I've been doing them for a few weeks, and having a grand time so far. Hopefully I can keep it up. (And if you have suggestions for other possible day-challenges, either for me or for anyone who might do this, feel free to post them in a comment.)

1) Write at least one letter to an old friend (a quality letter, not just a quick email)
2) Draw or paint a picture
3) Write at least one poem according to a conventional form (haiku, sonnet, iambic pentameter, etc.)
4) Speak a word of encouragement to everyone you talk to today
5) Have a friendly conversation with a complete stranger
6) Invite someone local to meet with you for lunch or coffee (or tennis!)
7) Master a song on the piano
8) Master a song on the trombone
9) Learn how to sing a hymn you don’t know
10) Turn off your CDs and mp3s—instead, sing your own songs today
11) Write a hymn that uses the insights/sayings of classic Christian writers
12) Write a short story
13) Write at least one chapter in one of your novel-projects
14) Go birdwatching somewhere
15) Write a poem for Rachel
16) Learn a folk song, family hymn, or lullaby that comes from Rachel’s family
17) Go bowling or play bocce-ball (or a different sport/game) with someone
18) Go for a walk or hike on a route you haven’t walked before
19) Go for a bike ride
20) Cook a new dish for dinner
21) Brush up on your French or Swahili
22) Study the history and culture of an unfamiliar country/people
23) Go online and comment on all your friends’ blogs
24) Write a poem for a family member or close friend, and send it to them
25) Go on a walk (with a tree field-guide book) and identify all the trees you see
26) Spend some time studying a field that doesn’t match your natural interests (music theory, art technique, psychology, economics, anatomy & physiology, geology, construction, auto repair, etc.)
27) Read an entire classic play (Shakespeare, Chekhov, Sophocles, etc.)
28) Watch a classic movie you haven’t seen before
29) Spend a day in “poverty”—worn clothes, meager food, most of the time spent outside, etc.
30) Learn and practice a classical chess opening
31) Study and/or practice some gardening
32) Practice a “holy day” – total fast, observe the seven offices, service & alms, etc.
33) Attend a weekday mass at a liturgical church
34) Whenever you hear music today, dance along with it
35) Make a phone call to at least one old friend
36) Write letters to your grandparents
37) On the hour, every hour, tell Rachel that you love her, and say something specific that you appreciate about her
38) Take the camera with you and practice still-life and nature photography throughout the day
39) Write some reminiscences (in journal or story-form) about places or experiences in your past; look through old pictures
40) Write and send a few letters to persecuted Christians around the world (see VOM & Open Door websites)
41) Eat vegetarian for the entire day
42) Practice the Ignatian method of prayer and examen today
43) Draw/paint a religious icon
44) Write out a list throughout the day of all the things you’re thankful for
45) Flip through the books/notes of a college or seminary class as a refresher
46) Write letters to missionaries you know or support
47) Refresh your Greek
48) Refresh your Hebrew
49) Write out a plot and character-sketches for a possible future novel
50) Go see a notable sight in the area or attend an event which you haven’t seen/attended before

Quote of the Week

2010-05-07T07:52:00.000-07:00

Here's another bit of wisdom from the Stoic philosopher Seneca:

"Soft living imposes on us the penalty of debility; we cease to be able to do the things we've long been grudging about doing." (Epistulae Morales, Letter LV)

This is an important point to remember, especially in such an age of "soft living" as we in present-day America now enjoy. It implies a secondary point, nearly as important: that there are things in our lives which we ought to be doing, but which are diffucult for us to do. There are things which do not immediately spark an affinity with our natures and habits, but which are, in spite of that, essential. What are these things? Practices like prayer, moderation, study, exercise, and so on--anything that requires self-discipline. And this speaks directly to who we are. Our human natures do not naturally encourage us to self-discipline. Rather, we slouch towards mediocrity and whatever is comfortable. But Seneca recognizes that this is in fact a disease of human nature--the tendency against self-discipline is part of who we are, but it is not part of who we ought to be. So that's the hidden point of this quote. To be truly human, in the best possible sense, requires a life of challenging ourselves to continuous moral and personal growth. That life will not come easily, but it is necessary. But the main point, the evident point, is that if we don't practice the activities of self-discipline, if we don't intentionally push ourselves towards good deeds and temperance, then we will slowly lose the capability to do those things. They take practice, and if we don't practice them, they become harder and harder to do. We fall into ruts of mediocre living. And then we can't get back out. My generation, sadly, has fallen into the debilities of soft living--of making entertainment and pleasure the center of their lives, brought to them by TV and video games and online attractions. And unfortunately, one needs only to look at the moral stagnation and lack of development in so many young people (but, of course, it's not limited to young people) to see the cost of this debility. It's a danger to me, too--a danger I feel all too powerfully. Soft living is attractive,and easy to fall into. Recently I instituted a plan of action for myself, so that I intentionally make time each day for some good activity. I call them "Day-Challenges"--I have a list of about fifty different activities that I want to make a regular part of my life, activities which take discipline and intentionality (simple things, like taking the time to go on a nature walk or writing letters to my grandparents). If I tried to make myself do them all each day, they would never get done. And if I just left it up to my whims to take them up, they would never get done. So each day, I pick one day-challenge to do that day. Without this intentional self-discipline, practiced in a prudent and sustainable manner, I would be living a much more debilitated life, dictated mainly by the comforts waiting for me at home whenever I come back from the office. Seneca has challenged me on this mark, and I hope he may challenge you too. So take this warning from an ancient wise man, and push yourself to live the best possible life you can, with God's help, before you lose the capacity for practicing the disciplines that will lead to a rich spiritual, moral, and social life.

Quote of the Week

2010-04-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

(One of the new programs I'll be launching for this blog is to put up a "quote of the week." Sometimes it is the well-put aphorism, the nugget of truth, that abides with us far longer than the ten-page essay does, so I think it's worthwhile to highlight important thoughts in this way. Now, it would be easy enough to collect quotes haphazardly through a Google search, but the quotes I put up on this blog will all be selected from my own readings. In most cases, these will all be quotes which have stuck with me or impacted my thinking during the week. I'll also try to give a little context for each quote.)

Seneca, in his Letters from a Stoic (or, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium), puts great stress on the good life as that which continually strives for moral improvement. He does not let us sit content with the current status of our souls. Although Seneca wasn't a Christian, his advice is a good challenge for us in our journey of sanctification. We are to be the sort of people who examine our own lives, seek out our faults, and constantly amend our way of life to better accord with holiness and virtue:

"Of this one thing make sure against your dying day--that your faults die before you do."

Poems

2010-04-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

I've been going through a poetry-drought for nearly a year now. The muse seems to be silent. But today I worked at it a little bit. Although I depend mostly on inspiration and mystical bursts of literary beauty to write my poetry, truly good poetry takes hard work--work that I, too often, don't have the discipline to give it. But today I worked at it through the simple form of haiku. Of course, haiku being a Japanese form, some of the rules change or are lost when using it as an English device. I appreciated working with the form, though, because the tightness of the structure gives the poems the poignancy of a "literary snapshot," encapsulating no more than a feeling, an image, or a single thought. Anyway, here are a few miscellaneous haiku I wrote today, in an effort to get back to writing poetry:

In the rain, again
I stand amid falling hopes
And pray for refuge

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O Thou tragic Christ--
Descending, crimson in death
Rent by wood and nails

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She smiles like sunshine
Through a dim, plate-glass window
On a dreary day

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God made grackles, too
I remind myself of that
When they mob my tree

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Pause yourself, silent...
Listen, listen achingly
To the still, small voice

Beating Sin with Beauty

2010-03-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

Parenting an unruly child, and parenting them well, isn't an easy thing to do. (And for those of you who might be wondering, Josiah isn't unruly--at least not yet.) And eventually, when boundaries get pushed too far and a child asks for reasons why they have to obey, this line always comes out: "Because I said so!" And in parenting, it can actually be an appropriate response. I suppose, if you had a particularly bright, articulate, and patient child, you could answer his question of "But why do I have to clean up my room?" with a discussion about how it's important to cultivate good habits of personal cleanliness and self-discipline early on in life. But for most kids, that wouldn't go over so well. They need to know that parents should be obeyed simply because of their authority as parents. So the old, fret-worn cry "Because I said so!" actually has its place.

However, there comes a point, after a person has matured to a deeper understanding of life and relationships, when "Because I said so!" is no longer enough. Teenagers, for example, usually want more motivation and rationale than the fact of parental authority before they go out of their way to obey. And in those situations, whenever possible, it's probably good to bring in the deeper reasons for what we ask them to do. I bring all this up to point out that in the Christian life, when confronted with the question of "But why shouldn't I commit this sin?" we too often fall back on the equivalent of "Because God said so!"

Now, let me be clear. Is "Because God said so" an improper response? No. If we were the kind of people that we ought to be, then that would be enough. We would obey, simply because God had laid down the ground rules, and God is God. But the truth is that we're not the people we ought to be, and on a practical level, the answer of "Because God said so," is not often effective. Let's take the example of sexual sin, one of the great temptations present in our culture. Suppose your bright, articulate, patient child has grown into a teenager, young and lithe and full of hormones. And he asks you (in his consummately articulate way), "But why mustn't I fornicate?" What do you say? "Because God said so," might work for a few kids. But rebellion against authority is now so hardwired into the teenage experience that that answer is not likely to go far. And in a "cheap grace" religion like the one that American evangelicalism too often is, it doesn't add up. Your bright, articulate teenager is smart enough to figure it out for himself: "Well, I've always been told that God is gracious and forgiving, and that all I have to do is to confess my sin, and I'll be back in good standing with God. So I'll just enjoy my fornication, confess my sin, and then I can have my cake and eat it too!" (Obviously, there are some theological problems here--but this reflects a good deal of the way that American Christians think.) So throwing down the "authority of God" card probably won't work too well. The only other answer that's commonly given to young people in the Christian community goes something along these lines: "Fornication will end up hurting you emotionally and will keep you from reaching that American-Christian dream of the perfect marriage to the perfect spouse where you raise two or three perfect kids." Or, in another form: "Premarital sex is a really stupid decision." Again, for a few kids, that probably works. The combination of the two main arguments worked pretty well for me when I was a teenager. But for most kids out there, that probably won't cut it. Teenagers in our culture aren't usually paragons of self-control, and the heady flood of hormones in their blood often overrides arguments like this one.

So what do you say? Is there another answer out there? Despite the fact that I've been talking about the problem of teen sex, that's not really what I'm aiming at. There are other answers to those questions out there (and we'll get to them in a minute), but they need to be inculcated through the whole life and teaching of the church, not thrown down as a random stymie to our teenagers' sexual impulses. The problem of trying to keep ourselves from sin by saying "Because God said so!" extends far beyond teenagers and far beyond sexual ethics. We all try to do it, and it doesn't work well for any of us. Consider the Christian who has fallen into patterns of manipulating people, the Christian porn addict, the Christian who reverts to gluttony as a balm for depression, the Christian on the edge of having an affair, the Christian who harbors hard-hearted thoughts against his neighbor. To say to them "You should stop doing this because God says so," is not only patronizingly simplistic, it probably won't work. Sin has a way of catching us in repetitive patterns of behavior, and we know as well as teenagers do that God is in the business of forgiving sin. If we believed in a God who was ready to send his redeemed children hurtling into hell at the slightest provocation, then it might carry more weight. But we don't believe that, nor should we.

So where do we go? What's our motivation for the hard task of rooting sin out of our lives? For a few Christians, gratitude is motivation enough--we're grateful for God's action in saving us from our sins, so we work hard to keep ourselves from falling back into them. That's all well and good, but for those of us who grew up as Christians, gratitude for salvation is more of an abstract reality than an experienced one, since we haven't tasted the full bleakness of a life without the grace of God.

The best answer I've found--from Scripture, from the early church fathers, and from the great traditions of Christian mysticism--is that our motivation can also be founded on a vision of what we could be. More than that, on a vision of what we will be--even here on this earth, in our lifetimes--if only we let God do his work in our hearts. In short, we need to fight sin with a vision of beauty--the beauty of humanity redeemed. It is that beauty of character and divine union that is at stake when we sin. And it must begin with a proper understanding of the atonement--that Jesus came not only to forgive sins, but also to bring holistic healing to the human soul. He came to undo the disease of sin, not just absolve us from the guilt of its symptoms. The redemption wrought through the Cross and the empty tomb has in mind not just a few souls rescued from hell, but an entirely renewed humanity, here and now. We are called to become, through Christ, what we were always meant to be. What might our lives look like if they were rich in holiness and loving union with God? If we get a sense of that potential life--the beauty of it--then we'll know what the stakes are when we sin. We're forfeiting our progress toward a life of tremendous peace and radiance, a life that is our inheritance in Christ.

Some theological critics might bring up the charge that this is an "anthopocentric" view of the Gospel. But it's not. Who we might become, through the work of the Holy Spirit and our own disciplined efforts, is a vision entirely grounded in the work of God in Christ. This is a theocentric view of the faith, but "theocentric" does not imply (as some people seem to think it does) that we do a disservice to God by also focusing on the nature of redeemed humanity. The New Testament is replete with teachings about who we ought to be, so it seems only natural that our theology should include a clear vision of who we are in Christ and who we might become. It's something that the writers of Scripture were greatly concerned about, and so should we be. (So many of Paul's moral and ethical arguments follow that form: "This is who you are in Christ, so now be who you are!") Please note that I'm not advocating anything like "Christian perfectionism," but rather calling to notice that the promises made in the New Testament regarding the shape and power of the Christian life are far and away more glorious than what most of us seem to be experiencing. What does that say to me? It says that there's more out there for us, that there's more that God wants to make of us, if only we'll let him. So here's one of our great motivations for the hard work of obedience and fighting sin: we can become extraordinary. Does that sound selfish--or maybe prideful--to focus so much on our own end and purpose? It needn't be selfish--we will be extraordinary because Christ is extraordinary, and the highest levels of Christian devotion and union lead us to the point where we simply reflect him in every increasing clarity. It gives honor to God to recognize that he can make us more than "sinners saved by grace"--he can make us saints. And if we understood what true sainthood is, then we would understand that it is not selfish to desire that end.

That's the journey that's at stake when sin confronts us. True, we ought to obey God because he is God. We ought to obey him out of gratitude. Ultimately, we ought to obey him because we love him (but it can be a long journey to grow into that kind of love). So in a practical sense, one of our main motivations is that we ought to obey him because of what he wants to make of us--a journey that, at least here in this lifetime, might be forfeit if we let ourselves be pulled away into sin. The constant theme of the NT epistles is that the fundamental reality of who we now are--children of God--ought to become an experiential reality in our lives. If Christian tradition is to be believed, that journey leads us to a vision of incredible and compelling beauty. And if we set out that vision in our churches, before our children and teens and adults, I think we would see a much more thoughtful hesitancy in the face of sin's temptations. God is not only concerned with saving us from hell; he's also concerned with what kind of people we become. And so should we be, because the promises of what we might become are promises of unimaginable beauty.

Book Review: Cicero's "On Friendship"

2010-03-11T16:48:00.000-08:00

Since so much of my time and thought revolves around the books I’m reading, I’ve decided to make it a regular practice to offer “book reviews” from time to time here on my blog. Normally, book reviews offer the service of analyzing books that are relatively new and giving opinions on them. However, I read very few new books. And it seems to me that readers nowadays need more of a push toward reading old books than reading new ones. So the service I’m offering is this: as I read through the books in my collection—classic fiction, poetry, history, philosophy, theology, and so on—I’ll highlight, here in my blog, the ones I find most worth reading. So rather than reading book reviews to interact with new ideas and to choose which new books to read, you can come here and read book reviews to interact with old ideas and, hopefully, be inspired to pick up a few old books yourself. Of course, there are undoubtedly many reviewers who are more distinguished and qualified to discuss the works I’ll present. But my main hope is not to explain in full depth and precision an author’s system of thought, but rather to offer encouragement for those who might be looking for a thought-stimulating “pleasure read,” as well as to describe how these works have been influential in my own life. This will be a good discipline for me, giving me opportunity to ponder and interact with an author’s ideas for awhile instead of just closing the book and moving on to another one as soon as I finish reading. As such, I’ll be focusing mostly on works that I’ve recently read myself. But, every once in a while, I may turn back to highlight one of the deeply formative all-time favorites on my reading list (The Imitation of Christ, Julian's Revelations of Divine Love, Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations are just a few that come immediately to mind).

For this review, we’ll look at Cicero’s treatise On Friendship (or Laelius). It’s a short read—you can cruise through it in a single evening. And it’s a fine introduction to the thought of Cicero, one of the great orators of Western civilization. In this treatise, Cicero gives us his thoughts on friendship as if from the mouth of Gaius Laelius, reflecting on a long companionship with the late Publius Scipio. Friendship is a theme that I've written about before in this blog (3/20/2009), and I think our culture is in particular need of a reminder about its true nature. Cicero gives us that reminder--not just appealing to the lowest common denominator of the slight mutual affections that all people can relate to, but pointing us toward a kind of friendship that is exceedingly rare and unbelievably precious.

He begins with what might seem at first glance like an indefensible statement: "Friendship can only exist between good men" (I:5). Well, we all know bad men who appear to have friends. But that's not the kind of friendship he's talking about. In the post I wrote a year ago on friendship, I outlined three basic levels of friendship, and the highest, what I called "soul friendship" or "true friendship," is the sole aim of Cicero's treatise. Lower levels of friendship--mere common affection or acquaintances, which unfortunately compose the sum of most of our culture's friendships--only earn a few mentions in this treatise.

For Cicero, friendship can only exist between good people because friendship is intimately tied to virtue. It's only in people who have learned to tame their natural, self-interested impulses that true friendship can thrive. So many of what we normally think of as friendships are either tainted by self-interest (i.e., what we can get out of it, or how the relationship makes us feel) or by a lack of love for the other person. But we should not be content with that. There is a higher level of friendship that we can aspire to, and if we reach it, then we have tasted that thing of which "the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful" (II:13). It is only in virtuous people, unbound by selfishness and thus independent from the need of flattery or consolations from others, that this level of friendship can flourish. It is virtue itself that draws two like-minded friends together, "on our finding some one person with whose character and nature we are in full sympathy, because we think that we perceive in him what I may call the beacon-light of virtue. For nothing inspires love, nothing conciliates affection, like virtue" (II:8).

That's not to say that lower forms of friendship aren't valuable. Few of us (if any) have attained such heights of virtue yet as to have no trace of self-interest in our friendships. But Cicero gives us a wonderful goal to shoot for--a relationship that is "the most valuable and beautiful furniture of life" (II:15), in which there is "no satiety--the older the sweeter, as in wines that keep well" (III:19). Or in my own words, taken from my earlier blog-post: "Soul-friendships are immeasurably rich and transformative--havens of peace and loyalty, strength and honor, adventure and joy."

But how do we get there? That's the crucial question. It's not that people in our culture don't want those rich, deeply satisfying relationships--it's that they don't know how to find them, or if they're even possible at all. And here Cicero hits the nail on the head: "Most people unreasonably want such a friend as they are unable to be themselves, and expect from their friends what they do not themselves give. The fair course is first to be good yourself, and then to look out for another of like character" (III:22). If Americans could get this one truth worked into their relationships, we would see a much less broken society around us. To find a virtuous friend, first be a virtuous person. To find a loyal and loving spouse, first become a loyal and loving person. Then we would understand better who we are ourselves, and not ask our friends and spouses to be something that not even we can measure up to.

But virtue isn't merely the prerequisite of friendship--once established, friendship is also the rich soil that can carry your character into regions of virtue hitherto unattainable. It is in communion with others, not alone, that we become good. "Nature has given us friendship as the handmaid of virtue, to the end that virtue, being powerless when isolated to reach the highest objects, might succeed in doing so in union and partnership with another" (III:22). This is why mentoring relationships and accountability partnerships and close friendships are so important to Christian discipleship--it's in those dynamics that virtue grows best.

I was drawn to read Cicero's thoughts on friendship, partly because I've had richly rewarding relationships on the past that had potential to grow into covenants of virtue and affection, and partly because I find myself in a new place now, without any old friends around me. (Rachel and I, of course, are good friends, but the truth is that a man will find his life impoverished without a male friend, and a woman will find her life impoverished without a female friend--the marriage relationship, as wonderful as it is, was never meant to be independent and all-sufficient.) Having tasted just a hint of what such a friendship can be like, I'm finding myself on the lookout now for just such a friend. And by God's grace, I'm sure I'll find one.

I've sketched out the main points of Cicero's treatise that hit home to me; but there are many other chords he strikes along the way--if you've read this far in my post, you probably owe it to Cicero to read his thoughts for yourself. I leave you with this quote, from his conclusion, which bears echoes of Paul's famous line from 1 Cor. 13: "Make up your minds to this: Virtue (without which Friendship is impossible) is first; but next to it, and to it alone, the greatest of all things is Friendship" (III:27).

Thoughts on Sports, Part 3

2010-03-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

And now for the final installment of my much-acclaimed, prize-winning series "Thoughts on Sports." The case being made, against certain critics of pro sports within American Christianity on the one hand, and against pro-sports fanatics on the other, is that sports have an important cultural role to play in our society, but that we always need to be aware of the inherent cultural-influence dangers associated with them. In this article, we'll look at addressing some of the common objections that are made against the practice of pro sports.

Objection #1: Sports heroes get idolized in inappropriate ways
All too true. While it's natural for sports heroes to get idolized because they fill the cultural niche of mythology/legend for us, it is still inappropriate. Why should I devote so much of my attention and affection to someone whose one great skill is an ability to throw a ball accurately? It's impressive, but hardly laudable. We are constantly reminded, over and over again by the events on our news channels, that great athletes are not always great people. Every once in a while, you run into an athlete who also has a laudable character. And good for them. But the fact remains--I have a ton of people with laudable characters in my church and in my town, so why do those few athletes merit extra-special attention for their good deeds? I would even argue that in the case of those few "good" athletes, it's still better not to set too much admiration on them, because the milieu they live in is so full of temptations that they are probably more likely to disappoint us than any other group of people (except maybe politicians). And here's the main point I want to get across: why on earth do we celebrate and idolize physical prowess, and pay almost no attention to spiritual prowess? Why is it that men who obsessively devote their lives to building freakish amounts of muscle gain more acclaim than those who devote their lives to constant, passionate prayer? Why is it that physical fanaticism is applauded, and spiritual fanaticism is seen as revolting and absurd? The true heroes are the ones no one knows about, the old ladies who are prayer warriors all day long, the missionaries giving their lives to gain one inch of ground in a hard-hearted land, the monks who study God's word until it becomes their every thought. There was once a day when it was the other way around--when people from all over would flock out to the desert to see the "spiritual athletes" who had given their lives to the service of God in prayer. But no more. Now, churches and Christian conferences drool over the prospect of finding an athlete who is also a Christian to speak in their services. Athletes may at times be good people, but let's give the honor where it's really due--let's pin up full-size posters of Benedict and Francis on our walls instead of LeBron James and Peyton Manning. And maybe--here's a radical idea--it might even be worth trying to take spiritual discipline and exercise as seriously as we take physical exercise in our own lives. You don't need to play ball to be a hero--just learn how to pray.

Objection #2: Players' salaries are so gaudy as to be a repulsive mockery of cultural values
This is true, to a degree. It is downright ridiculous how much you can earn for being good at playing a ball game. Although sports fill an important cultural niche, is it so important that our athletes ought to be paid far more than the president of our country? Probably not. Regardless of what we think of the president, I think we could all agree that our country would get along better without an athlete or two than without a president.
However, there are a few points that need to be made here. Usually when this objection is brought up, it's in a sense of revulsion for the players themselves. But we need to remember that it's not the players' fault (though they can be inordinately greedy at times)--it's really our fault and our neighbors' fault. Athletes earn so much money because we pay them so much money. Because sports are marketed as entertainment, the athletes earn their share of what the audience will pay to see them play--and that turns out to be a lot. I bet that if I was a statistician, I could give throw out some hefty numbers at this point to prove that the money we pay to professional sports could easily solve world hunger. Thankfully, some sanity is beginning to come back into the sports world thanks to the recent financial crunch, and several of the professional leagues are arming up for some number-crunching battles between athletes and owners. Apparently some Americans aren't as comfortable as they used to be in paying thousands of dollars for gameday seats. All that to say--it's not the players' fault, and if we want their salaries to come down, then we need something akin to a full cultural revolution on the level of the American individual's personal priorities. Until that time, the best we can do is to applaud those athletes (and there are lots of them) who use their money to do tremendous good for their communities and the world.

Objection #3: Don't sports promote violence?
Yes and no. Some sports (football, hockey, boxing, etc.) do promote a certain level of violence. But in most cases, it's not a violence of hatred or aggression so much as a tactical sort of violence. It's no more than the sort of violence that boys naturally engage in. But it can run to unhealthy extremes--for example, when football shows run montages of brutal hits and tackles just for shock value. Some sports--like professional wrestling or MMA or UFC--also seem to me to cross the line. Early Christian tradition had a long history of avoiding "the games" because the violence being practiced in the arena was degrading to the great truth that human beings are made in the image of God. This takes careful discernment--there are natural thrills to be had in viewing and practicing violence, even in a "harmless" game format--but we need to be asking ourselves whether such things honor the body as the temple of God.

Objection #4: What about the Sabbath?
Unfortunately, very few people in our society practice the Sabbath at all. Most professional athletes, because of their schedule, can't use Sunday as a Sabbath-day. They have to wait for a "day off," whenever that may come. If I were pastoring a professional athlete, though, I would recommend that the principle behind the Sabbath-commandment be followed. It need not be on Sunday (my Sabbath isn't, either), but the important thing is to set aside time to rest, to reflect, and to be in the presence of God. And for all of us Christian sports-watchers out there, I would speak a word of caution: it's far too easy for us to spend our Sabbath-time watching non-stop sports. There are so many sporting events offered up for our entertainment that a whole Saturday or Sunday can go by in front of a TV screen. And that's a waste. It's fine to watch some sports as a way to relax and unwind, but if you're not using your Sabbath as a time to re-charge spiritually, then you're missing one of the greatest blessings God has given us. Take some time to pray, to read, to go on a reflective walk in the woods. If we took the Sabbath seriously, I think we would be people who are much more spiritually "in tune" to what God is doing and saying, to us and to our world.

Objection #5: Don't sports distract us from real life?
Yes, they can. And that's why we need to be careful. They have their place, as I argued in my earlier posts. But we need to be discerning. Following our favorite sports teams can consume our lives. We need to set boundaries, particularly in regard to how we spend our time. Sports are fine as entertainment, but we rarely get anything edifying out of them. And if all we do is watch sports and read about sports, then we could be missing out on learning and reading about stuff that matters, stuff that could change our lives. If we just put some boundaries in place so that our sports-affection doesn't run over into idolatry, and if we take some time to focus on things that can build up our souls, then we will be better people in the end for it.

So in short--love your sports-teams with passionate loyalty, but be wise about who they really are and what they really mean. Let sports be a signpost that turns your attention toward the things that really matter. Appreciate sports for what they are, but don't let them steal your heart from its deeper loves.

Thoughts on Sports, Part 2

2010-02-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

I've already spoken about sports as a form of regional/family patriotism. But sports also fill a few further cultural niches. One of its more fundamental roles is as a communal art form. Sports are communal in the sense that they bring a group of people together for one purpose (in this case, the athletes are brought together to play a game). And sports are also an art form in the sense that each game is the creation of something new, the possibility of working together to make something (a certain play or the storyline of a particular game) that has never existed before. In our individualized, de-contextualized society, those are both very good things. It's worth asking, then, whether by professionalizing sports and becoming viewers rather than participants, we're actually losing the most valuable part of sport. Sports were invented to be played, and only secondarily to be watched. It would probably do the adults of this country good if more of us joined rec leagues and started learning all the lessons that we tell our kids they're learning on their school teams. I begin with this point because it's worth remembering that the professionalization of sports is something of an aberration of its true nature, and if we're really to judge the value of sports fairly, we need to play them.

For better or worse, however, most sports have become professionalized, and, thanks to TV, an object for mass consumerism. So the next niche that sports fill is that of entertainment. Professional sports are a show, put on for our pleasure (and our money). So while we might care deeply about the teams participating in a certain game, it's always worthwhile to remember that at a certain level, it is just that--a game--and it doesn't really affect any of the deepest levels of our lives. I enjoy watching sports a great deal--it's a fun way to unwind, to be caught up in the narrative of a competition--but, truth be told, when I was doing my mission work in Africa, without any TV, I didn't miss watching sports at all. In fact, that was the season of my life when I enjoyed sports the most--not watching it or tracking stats online, but playing soccer with the village kids.

Another niche, and a somewhat subtler one, is the cultural niche of heroic legend. We Americans have a patriotic set of heroic legends (George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett, and so on), but none of those actually hold much sway over our daily lives. But sports provides a whole mythology for us, easily accessible and ongoing, something that we can believe in, feel a part of, and recount to our children. A mythology is really a cultural necessity--it develops on its own, because humans need something to believe in--and in our ahistorical society, which cares little about forefathers or saints, professional athletes and sports franchises have stepped in to fill that void. What do I mean by a mythology? I mean a set of legends, of heroes, of the great tales of years gone by, that are shared and relished and incorporated into our daily lives. And professional sports, for all its competitive flair and the relative permanency of its teams, fits the bill exactly. I'm able to cheer for the same teams that gave my father and my grandfather great stories and memories in their day. The tremendous victory of the 2004 Red Sox, coming back against their old rivals the Yankees in an unrivaled and near-impossible way, and then going on to win the World Series for the first time in 80-plus years--that is the stuff of legends. Though I hadn't personally experienced much of Red Sox history, I knew the legends: Babe Ruth's trade to the Yankees that ushered in a century of dominance for our foes, the great Red Sox players of years past who set records but never stood as champions, the near misses and heartbreaking losses (Bill Buckner...). None of those things did I actually witness. But they were part of me, part of the legend I had bought into, and so they made the victory of my 2004 Red Sox all the more astounding. We are beings who desperately want to believe in one great story, and our attachment to sports is a reflection of that. For some people, unfortunately, the great sports-stories actually usurp the place that the truly great story of history should hold--the mission of God in the world--but for most Christians, adherence to the legends of sport is simply a reflection of that same God-given hunger for one great story. It drives us to believe in the possibility of redemption, to hope that, despite all the woes and heartache along the way, our story will one day end in unbelievable triumph. Sport as a mythology is a reflection of our natural, human yearning for the God of salvation-history.

This brings us to the final niche I want to explore: sport as an incarnation of cultural values. This is seen in a number of ways. First and foremost is the fact that almost everyone knows that there is an unspoken moral code associated with sports. It doesn't win games or earn points, but everyone honors it--"good sportsmanship." Despite the fact that we know that professional athletes are often self-centered, greedy showoffs, we still expect them to be respectful to each other and to the officials, to be relatively honest (i.e., no outright cheating), and to be ambassadors for the moral virtues of our culture. Professional leagues go out of their way to present their athletes as goodwill ambassadors for all kinds of charitable programs. And it's interesting to note the reactions from fans when sports heroes break this moral code: though it has no effect on the outcome of the game whatsoever, players are called to task for not shaking hands with opponents after a loss, for being angry during press conferences, or for having moral failings in their own private lives. But why? If sport is simply entertainment, we really shouldn't care about any of those things. But we do care, because we still believe that morality and courtesy are important, and we expect sports, as an icon of our culture, to reflect that belief. The truth is that every game reflects something about the culture that produces and plays it. Sometimes it reflects good things, sometimes bad. While "good sportsmanship" is a positive reflection on our culture, the cult of sports also reveals our unnatural and distorted cultural obsession with the body, with health, and with youth.

Consider three iconic sports, two that stand as major American games, and one that is the world's game--American football, baseball, and soccer. Football is overwhelmingly popular here in the US, but its appeal has never spread much beyond our borders. One of the reasons, I think, is that it is a game cultivated in America, and so it is a reflection of certain cultural values that the rest of the world doesn't share. For instance, it reflects the American devotion to careful planning--holding "business meetings" before each play, as it were--followed by quick, active strikes. It also reflects an attraction to physical power (and maybe violence) that other cultures might not share. It borrows heavily from the imagery of war: blitzes, sacks, and so on, as well as the whole process of playing the game as a conquest of winning territory from your opponent. Football also plays into our exaltation of the cult of the leader, since it highlights certain roles (quarterback, coach, runningback) as particularly important. We are a culture that focuses inordinately on leaders (and, even in the culture of the American church, "leadership" has somehow become an idea of enormous consequence and study despite the fact that Scripture and church history would have us study and focus on "followership" over and above leadership any day). Football, along with basketball and a few other sports, also reflects our culture's slavery to the clock. We are a time-drenched society (a far cry from the more relaxed tradtional cultures of Africa, where time is not metered off into tiny portions in which to be productive, but rather enjoyed in long, patient pauses with friends), and the tyranny of the clock in football reflects this. A great deal of the strategy of the game comes down to "clock management," which is both interesting and unusual. Other sports, like soccer, also use clocks, but in a looser way, and not with the sort of neurotic control that we football-fans employ.

Now to baseball. A very different game from football, but it also tells us something about American culture. More than any other sport, baseball feeds our love of numbers. It reduces so nicely to statistics--any kind of statistic you can possibly imagine. Players are rated almost entirely on their performance statistics, and only once in a while do you hear other values (like camaraderie, leadership, or a personal gift for encouragement) mentioned, and then only as "intangibles." But performance is measurable, and so we measure it all. We have statistics for how well right-handed pitchers throw against left-handed batters, for which corners of the strike zone a batter hits best in, for how many feet and inches a home run travels. In fact, if you've watched baseball games on TV, you've no doubt noticed that commentators will even bring in completely irrelevant statistical data, just to have some numbers to talk about (one of the most common occurrences of this type is when commentators note statistical performance streaks that run back years in a particular team's history--the only problem being that the players on the team when that statistic began were completely different from the team's current players, so the performance of the "team" over that period is relatively meaningless). We worship numbers, and baseball is our pantheon. Second, it also reinforces our individualism. While other sports must be played as teams, baseball is highly individualistic. You still need a team, but it's always really one man versus one man--pitcher vs. batter. The catcher and the defense also come into it, obviously, but it's mostly about the individual performances of those two. And when the ball is hit out into the field, it only affects the player that it rolls to and the player defending the base that the hitter runs to. The poor left fielder might have nothing to do for an entire inning, because it's all based on individual performances. (Contrast that to soccer or basketball, which are far more fluid and team-oriented in the sense that everyone needs to be doing their job at each particular moment).

And now soccer--the game that the world is fanatical about, but which Americans don't particularly care for. I would suggest that there are some cultural values at play here. But, considering that Americans are again the ones singled out by this sport (this time on the unappreciative end), I think it says something about us. Soccer requires a certain patience, waiting for the long buildup to a few rare and glorious moments (goals). It may be that we don't enjoy watching soccer (though many of us enjoy playing it) because of a lack of patience. There's also that disappointing business of the possibility of ending in a tie. We Americans like clear results--a winner, a loser--but having two competitors end a contest on equal terms just doesn't sit well with us. We've never been a people comfortable with ambiguities (even in circumstances when ambiguities are better reflections of reality). A third example of cultural values might reflect more happily on Americans: watching international soccer hasn't really caught on in the US, partly, I think, because the sport sometimes ends up encouraging the practice of bending ethics in order to gain an advantage. Professional soccer players often take dramatic dives and dish out hard fouls (and sometimes commit handball fouls) and then feign a great show of innocence, which comes across (at least to this American--further, an American who enjoys soccer) as a little distasteful and against our hallowed value of "good sportsmanship."

There are more connections that could be explored for all these sports, to be sure. I point these out just to elucidate the fact that sports paint a pretty vivid picture of the things we value in our culture. And, given the popularity and near-ubiquity of sports in American culture, it's worth being aware of those tendencies, so that we can guard ourselves against their excesses.

After looking at the "cultural niches" that sports fill, I think it's safe to say that, from a position of moral judgment over professional sports, we can admit that it's a mixed bag. Sports fill some very important functions in our society, and they have the potential to reflect and reinforce some of our best tendencies as well as some of our weaknesses. In my next section, to be posted in a few days, we'll look at answering some of the common objections from moralistic critics of professional sports.

Thoughts on Sports (including, among other things, why I don't like the Colts, Yankees, or Lakers)

2010-02-09T09:22:00.000-08:00

I was pleased with this year's Superbowl. It was a good game, the (slight) underdog won out, and, most importantly, the team that I can't bring myself to ever cheer for--the Indianapolis Colts--lost. While my wife Rachel was also pulling for the Saints, her interest seemed like it was driven by a more noble motivation--the emotional uplifting of a downtrodden city. The truth is, she's never quite understood my revulsion against certain teams; she tells me that "hate" is probably too strong a word to use against them, and that I shouldn't be calling the New York Yankees evil. And in a way, she's probably right. But, as Pascal said so eloquently, "the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of," and my heart doesn't like the Colts. (Or the Jets. Or the Yankees. Or the Lakers.) All in all, it's actually been quite a bad year in that respect--the Lakers and Yankees both won their respective championships, and the Colts and Jets were the last teams standing atop the AFC. The Saints' victory was the only trace of redemption for this misbegotten year in sports. But, as Rachel reminds me, it's worth asking why these feelings exist, or if they should exist at all. Is it okay for me to delight in Peyton Manning's tragic shortfalling?

So, with the Superbowl come and gone, it's a good time to take stock of where our American sports-frenzy fits into the Christian life. It's not an easy issue, as demonstrated by the recent flurry of debate in Christianity Today on the subject (http://www.christianitytoday.com/). There are staunch Christian defenders of sport, lauding its virtues of teamwork, persistence, and discipline, and there are also detractors who would point to our devotion to sports as idolatry. But, as is often the case, the truth is probably a bit more complex than a simple black-and-white perspective on sports. As some of the issues involved in this debate have been on my mind for awhile, I thought I would throw in my two cents on the subject. First I'll take a look at several cultural "niches" that sports fill--i.e., what functions sports serve in our wider culture; and then I'll deal with some of the objections commonly made against the practice of professional sports. (Note: since the beginning of my first section rambles on for a bit, I'll put it up as its own post first and then come back with some further reflections on sports in a few days).

Sport as Regional Patriotism and Family Loyalty
First, we'll look at the reason for my sports-hatred of certain teams. (If you're a sports fan, it probably seems like common sense that you end up hating certain teams. But for those outside of the bounds of true "fandom," it looks odd, and perhaps even unChristian--so I think it's worth exploring). Let's begin by asking why we cheer for certain teams. For most fans, there's a very good reason: we cheer for teams that represent our home areas. Or, in some cases, we cheer for teams that those we love cheer for (our fathers, brothers, friends, and so on). In this sense, our love for certain teams is a reflection and extension of a broader, deeper love. I cheer for the New England Patriots, the Boston Red Sox, and the Boston Celtics because they represent the area I call home, the places I love. They are the nearest professional sports teams to my home state of Maine, as well as the teams that I "inherited" from my family, and so they've become my own in a special way. If I had grown up in Indiana, I would love and cheer for the Colts (even though I shudder to think of it). I have a scattering of a few other teams that I pull for, if for some reason my New England teams are out of the picture: the San Antonio Spurs (for my time in southern Texas as a boy), the Colorado Rockies, Denver Broncos, and Denver Nuggets (for my recent seminary-years), and, sometimes, the Minnesota Vikings (for some long-standing connections that my family has with Minnesota). It's not that these teams excel in certain virtues that the others lack; I love them because they represent places that I love. In this sense, sports fandom is a form of regional patriotism. It is a love of home and an expression of affinity with those who share that home. It can be, in its best form, a way to "love thy neighbor." Although the passion that gets associated with one's fandom often overshadows all this, if we trace it back far enough, we will usually find that one's sports-loves began as loves for home and family. And in this age of high mobility and the loss of local culture and local particularity, regional sports give us one last way to express our love of home. It represents, in some way, a delight in our roots.

And this, interestingly, is where my sports-hates come from. My hates are contingent upon my loves; they do not exist independently. I dislike the Colts and Jets because they have been long-standing foes of my Patriots. I dislike the Yankees because they are the rivals of my Red Sox. And I dislike the Lakers because they have traditionally been the great adversary of my Celtics. So in some sense, it's valid to say that these "hates" are actually expressions of my love. If not for the Patriots, I probably wouldn't care about the Colts one way or the other.

But the question still remains--is that a valid reason to cheer against the Colts in the Superbowl, when the Patriots are already long out of the picture? A critic might extend the argument: "If sports fandom is a reflection of regional patriotism, then does your national patriotism mean that you spend your time hoping for the downfall of China, the USA's current economic rival?" Not really. But I don't think it's a fair comparison, and here's why: while nations actually represent real people in the everyday condition of their lives, sports are largely disconnected from "real life." My cheering against the Colts will do no harm to anyone, nor does it wish any actual detriment to anyone's life, not even the Colts' players. So is it OK to cheer against the Colts? I think so, because sports are, for all the passion and emotion we fuel them with, simply a symbol, an icon. If I actually hoped for physical harm on Peyton Manning, that would be a different matter. But sports are a playground of the human condition, and perhaps--in some sense--a school for how the deepest loves in our lives should function.

And this is the point that I really want to hammer home: our sports-loves working as a reflection of how all our real loves should operate. The deepest loves in our lives are forms of covenant-loyalty, and if we are loyal to one side then we are against any opposing side. I ought to hate the devil and hope for his demise, because that is an extension of my love for God. Or take, for instance, the marriage-relationship--my love for Rachel should entirely exclude any improper affection for another woman. Think of it this way: if Rachel is the New England Patriots, then the Colts--her greatest rival in this context--represent any possibility of my infidelity. Because of my love for Rachel, I should be completely against that rival (the possibility of infidelity) in any situation. Thus it is that if I love the Patriots, I should be against their rival (the Colts or Jets) in any situation. Likewise, my love for my country should mean that I oppose the greatest rival of my country in any situation (and as a Christian, I don't believe that that rival is any other country--since countries represent people, and we're called to love all people--but rather a trend of cultural and moral backsliding). If I were ambivalent about the cultural/moral malaise of the 21st century, then that would mean that I didn't love America much. If I were ambivalent about the prospects of adultery for me in the future, then that would mean that I didn't love Rachel much. And if I were ambivalent about the Colts, then that would mean that my loyalty to the Patriots is not worth much. Thus, for the sake of my team and my homeland, I relish the demise of the Colts (with appropriate apologies to those of my friends who love the Colts.)

(And, as I said above, I'll write a few more thoughts on the subject of sports next week. Since it consumes so much of our time and money in our culture, it's worth asking the hard questions about its place in our lives.)

Update (along with a few thoughts on fatherhood and pastoring)

2010-01-31T17:30:00.000-08:00

Well, we're in Calais, Maine (pronounced "calus" by the locals, just to make things interesting, and not too French)--two thousand miles from our Colorado home of the past three and a half years. Even though we knew that our time in Colorado would probably be temporary, it was still bittersweet to leave it behind. We had wonderful friends there, an amazing church family, and it marked off a beautiful season of our lives. It was a season of my preparation for the ministry, of Rachel discovering a love for teaching (and also earning her Master's degree and putting in three solid years of work in a wonderful school). Colorado was the scene of our first few years as a married couple and the place where we welcomed our first child, Josiah, into the world. As with all such formative seasons and places in one's life, we've left a piece of our hearts in Colorado, and no doubt we'll be back there for a visit every now and then.

But now we're in Maine, a little bit closer to Rachel's family and very close to mine (just a 3-hour drive now!). There's something about the northeast, and Maine specifically, that has always been "home" for me, in the deep sense of a place of peace and belonging. There's something about brisk air and deep, lonely woods that speaks to my heart. So I'm excited to be here. (And Rachel, while having no particular love for Maine beyond her love for me, is also excited--excited about building up a life in a new place, sharing the ministry of the Lord's calling here, raising a family, and putting down roots in the lives of the people here). One of the neat things about Calais is that it's a place that has long connections with my family. The most recent connection goes back fifty years: my dad spent his elementary school years here, while my grandfather served as the principal of Calais High School. (Some of my parishioners had him as their principal, and the secretary at my church was also, by coincidence, my grandfather's secretary for one year back in the '60s). But this area was also home to my ancestors on my paternal grandmother's side back in the 1800s. And in even longer view, there's a good chance, in light of some genealogical research that my parents recently did, that I have at least one ancestor who came from the Passamaquoddy tribe, and Calais is right in the middle of the old stomping grounds of the Passamaquoddies. For a romantic like me, there's something wild and wonderful in returning to this "old homeland."

Far and away, though, the biggest change in our lives has been the birth of Josiah, healthy and strong, on Dec. 29. He made the long trip to Maine with us in his own admirable fashion (sleeping a lot), and today he charmed his new church family with his calmness and, of course, his downright cuteness. Here's a picture:

Although I'm still stuck in a season of life strangely devoid of any new poetry, I did write a journal entry of reflections after his birth, a few excerpts of which I'll share here:

"Josiah is here. This immense trust, the stewardship of a life, has been placed in our hands. What love--wild, strange, and firm--that latches on to this helpless child!--a love that seems to burst from the deepest recesses of the heart, that counts no loss of sleep, no sacrifice of time and energy, against its expression. I think it may be part of God's remarkable plan to use children to teach us how to let go of the slavery of self. Through Josiah, our hearts are turned outward, more so than ever before, and begrudge none of the sacrifices we make on his account...."

"Josiah is a cute little guy, with dark hair and deep brown eyes that peer confusedly out at the world every now and then. Most of his life so far has been a regular round of eating and sleeping (and pooping), and Rachel and I are trying to keep up. But I think we'll adjust well. It's hard to describe the feelings of love that well up, seemingly from nowhere, when I hold him in my arms. And that makes it all worth it, and more than worth it, a thousand times over. He is a sacred trust, an immortal soul put into our keeping, that we may raise him up to a glorious union with God. He does not exist for our emotional satisfaction, but, even so, those feelings of warmth and tenderness are a gift that binds this sacred trust inexorably to our hearts. And Josiah is teaching me, too, about the love of God. If my love for this child is so deep, so rich, so full, after merely being his biological father, how deep and awesome must be the love of God for us, our creator in flesh and in spirit, who not only set us in motion but who crafted us, skillfully, lovingly, and breathed his love into us. May my love for Josiah be a reflection, rich and true, of that kind of love."

The other big change is our arrival in Calais, and the beginning of my ministry as a pastor. I've never been a pastor before, so I'm grateful for the love and trust that the folks at Second Baptist Church have invested in me. They've shown a willingness to let me grow into this calling and this office, and their love and care for us, even in just these first few days, has been truly wonderful. No relationship between pastor and church is free of troubles, but even with that in mind, I'm hoping and expecting that God will do marvelous things through us--pastor and church--as we seek to do His will here in this town.

To be a pastor in a small city, though, is a unique dynamic. While there are five or six churches in Calais (a city of about 4000), I still felt, in walking around the local grocery stores, the weight of a deep responsibility and prayerful desire for all the people around me. I came under the distinct impression that my parish here was not only to be the Second Baptist Church, but also the whole community of Calais. While most of my duties will be focused on Second Baptist and its members, I, along with the church, are the ministers of Christ to all the people in this city. And while it has only been a few days that I've been here, I felt that I could begin to resonate with John Knox and his prayer for his "parish": "God, give me Scotland or I die!"

One of the things that I hope to do, then, as I begin my work as pastor, is to try to make at least one significant out-of-church contact each week. I hope to get to know the other local ministers, the community leaders, the tribal leaders of the local Passamaquoddy bands, and other folks from the area. I also plan to make prayer a central mark of my ministry--contemplative prayer, intercessory prayers for the church and community, prayerwalks around town, and a distinct emphasis on encouraging communal prayer in the life of the church. (I'm also hoping, incidentally, to use this blog as an arm of my pastoral ministry, which probably means that I'll try to start posting thoughts and prayers a little more often than in the past year). But the part of pastoral life that I'm most excited about is getting into the rhythm of studying, meditating on, and preaching the Word. Love for that book has shaped my life, and it is a joy to be able to plunge into its depths and share its riches with others.

So that's the story--the Burdens are back in the northeast, ready to launch into the next season of life and ministry. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

On My New Novel

2009-12-21T14:38:00.000-08:00

I just got the happy news from my publisher that my latest book, Freedom Cry, is now out and available for sale from Amazon.com (it will also be out in other markets and distributors in a few weeks). For those of you who are interested, I thought I would give you a little background and synopsis of the book.

It's a fantasy/adventure novel. "Fantasy" is a wild and weird genre, so it merits some explanation of how my novel fits into that landscape. In this case, "fantasy" refers to the fact that my story takes place in an entirely made-up world, complete with its own cultures, history, languages, and so on. While other fantasy novels are rich in details like wizards, magic, dragons, vampires, and the like, my story is a bit more "down-to-earth," in the sense that its characters are all basically human. There is a small spark of otherworldly mystery in the story, but I can't really give that out without spoiling some of the plot. "Why fantasy?" some of you might ask. Well, a couple of the more superficial reasons are that it's fun to write, requires no research, and allows the broadest scope of creative imagination in the writing process. On a deeper level, though, fantasy offers possibilities that other genres don't, because it allows us to step outside of the problems of our world and our history and to examine the human condition from an entirely new perspective. I know that fantasy isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if you like a good adventure story, I'm pretty sure you'll like this book.

Freedom Cry takes place in a rich and vivid world, and it follows the story of a group of young men and women from a nation of slaves. They toil under brutal conditions in the mines of the pagan Empire of Rameress, just as generations before them have done. But they have their own culture, their own stories and histories--and those stories tell them that they were once a free people, enslaved against their will. Inspired by these traditions and their faith in Imminya, the Most High God, Dryhten (the main character) and his friends set a plan in motion to liberate their people. Against all odds, they break out from the slave-camps and begin a race across the Empire. Through long marches and battles and the delight of finding new allies along the way, they push towards the sea with the one hope that somehow they will be able to find a way back to their ancient homeland. And along the way, as they challenge their old enemies with their faith and virtue, they end up changing the Empire itself.

Freedom Cry is the first of three books--"The Hidden Kings Trilogy." It's actually based on a fanciful story I started writing way back in the 6th grade. During my high school years I put out a few historical fiction novels, but when I came to my college years and was in the middle of my overseas work, I found that I didn't have the research materials available there to do another historical fiction book. So I decided to resurrect my childhood novel just for fun. By the time I was done, I had fallen in love with the story. So I wrote a second book, The Conqueror's Song, which explores the ancient histories from which the Freedom Cry characters draw their inspiration. By that point I had decided at least to try to get them published, so that my family and friends could enjoy the story as much as I was. As I pursued that process, I finished out the trilogy with the final installment, Pathways of Mercy. (Neither The Conqueror's Song nor Pathways of Mercy are out yet, but I expect to start the publication process on them soon).

If it sounds to you like Freedom Cry shares some themes with the Exodus story, you're right. The trilogy is kind of a fun imagination-experiment: What might the story of salvation-history look like if enacted in an entirely different world, with its own cultures and history? Freedom Cry is the introduction to that world, and it's in The Conqueror's Song and Pathways of Mercy that the whole story, full of the cosmic wonder of God's grace, is unraveled and told. So the trilogy will have themes and parallels that you will undoubtedly recognize, but these stories will also be new adventures in their own right. (A good example would be in the way that C. S. Lewis' Narnia-world borrows themes and parallels of the history of salvation from our world, but sets them in a whole new context and history). On a more basic level, though, Freedom Cry is simply a story of virtue in action, of a cast of characters who must wrestle against injustice and violence, and who strive to find, in the midst of all that, paths of forgiveness.

If you choose to buy the book, I really think you'll enjoy the story, and I hope that it serves to inspire and lift up your heart. And on a completely different note, you should also buy this book because my wife and I are having a baby in a few days, and we could use a few royalty checks!

Blessings, and happy reading!
-Matt Burden

Life in the Slow Lane

2009-12-14T15:49:00.000-08:00

Foundational American Virtues, and How I'm Subverting Them

A few months ago, I decided to turn down an opportunity for a part-time job in order to spend my days at home. For a man my age, that's usually a worrying symptom--"Why is he sitting around the house, letting his wife's job support them both, instead of being out working?" For many of us in American culture, our first thought is that such a man is evading responsibility, willfully choosing a life of laziness. We all know that there are too many people of my generation who are content to live in their parents' basements and play video games all day instead of being productive members of society.

In my particular case, my decision is probably not quite as worrisome, since I'll be starting a full-time pastoral position in February. This is, for me, a season of preparation and reflection rather than a willful escape from responsibility. But that's not really the point I want to make. Rather, I've found it interesting how this situation has highlighted certain cultural preconceptions we Americans have about work and leisure. I've felt like a counter-cultural radical for telling people that I chose to be unemployed. Isn't it interesting that the "virtues" that are most often honored in our culture are not things like charity and self-control, but productivity and efficiency? Just look at the last sentence of the previous paragraph--the contrast was between a lazy slacker and a "productive member of society." How many of you stopped to ask yourselves, "Why must a member of society be 'productive'?"

But we all do it--it's seeped into our language and the pattern of our thoughts. People ought to be, so we think, "productive members of society." That's one reason why the elderly are constantly being shoved to the margins. Something is vastly wrong. Productivity isn't necessarily bad, but it certainly shouldn't be the main virtue of our culture. And yet, for many of us, it is. (Perhaps the laziness of some members of my generation is a reaction against this unhealthy tendency.) We feel guilty for "wasting time." (As if time was a commodity or a possession that could actually be "spent" or "wasted" at all.)

Many other cultures in the world are experts at "wasting time" well, and their societies tend to be broader in virtues like hospitality and generosity as a result. In north Africa, where I lived for three months in 2004, the typical work-day still reflects the more leisurely pace of a desert-nomadic lifestyle. Sudanese men usually show up for work around 9 or 10. At 11, they take a break to eat the first meal of the day. That can last a couple hours, in which they rest in the shade, eat slowly, and talk with friends. They get back to work at 1 PM, and end their day around 3, so they can go home and be with their families for the central meal of the day (which, again, lasts a couple hours). Evenings are spent talking around little fires on the street corners with their friends and neighbors. So, from our American perspective, they don't get much done. They don't become wealthy from working these jobs. But they do have deep, rich relationships with one another, and they have time to cultivate the ancient and venerable arts of music and storytelling. After living with them for awhile, I wasn't entirely sure that our way of doing things was any better. We're wealthier and we finish our work-tasks faster, but most of us live at such a frenetic pace that we're almost constantly worn out. In our culture, even those who don't have full-time jobs feel the pressure to be constantly doing something. I would argue that even the vice of laziness in our culture is usually displayed in a preoccupied, always-active manner. There always needs to be something going on, something to distract us, whether that's the TV or the Internet or any of a thousand other entertainments. How many people take time to simply be silent?

Or consider this: when we meet someone new, what's the first question that we ask about their identity (besides an exchange of names)? "So, what do you do?" And what we mean, of course, is "What's your job?" Sometimes this is just a pleasant way of inquiring into what we assume takes up the bulk of a person's time. But more often, it's an expression of identity. We are what we do. "I'm a pastor." "I'm a construction worker." "I'm a professional curler." We refer to our jobs in terms of being, as if they define who we are. I'm not saying that this is a bad or improper state of affairs, but simply that it betrays something fundamental about our unconscious cultural assumptions. It has been good for me to have a few months to separate myself from that, to realize that I am who I am regardless of what I do for work. Maybe the next time you meet someone new, you can mix it up a little bit and give them the freedom to define themselves: "So, tell me about yourself."

Frenetic Utilitarians

Alexis de Tocqueville, in his classic book of observations on American society, Democracy in America, offers some penetrating insights into our culture. He noted that Americans, even when they take holidays and vacations, are characterized by rapid, frenetic activity. Even in the 1830s (when De Tocqueville wrote), Americans were using vacations as time to go somewhere, to see something new, to do that thing they've always wanted to do. De Tocqueville, coming from a more traditional European culture, found that odd. For him, vacations were a time to be restful. This is, to a degree, still the case. I recall reading an article about a year ago that compared Finnish attitudes toward work and leisure to American attitudes. The Finns, in stark contrast to Americans, regularly chose time with family rather than incentives of more money, and they tended to spend their vacation in rustic wilderness cabins rather than on expensive trips to someplace new. And, surprise surprise!--the Finns turned out to be generally more content with their lives than Americans did.

De Tocqueville also noted that while democracy usually tends toward the most egalitarian and just society, it does not usually produce the greatest society. When he speaks of "greatness," he is speaking in terms of cultural greatness. Democracy is more effecient at producing wealth for all levels of society, but it is not as good as the old societies of Europe (which had the benefit of rich patrons-of-the-arts) at producing great works of high culture. Also, since democracy pushes its citizens all to be self-sufficient and productive, there is no large class of people who have time for leisure and philosophy and prayer. In a democracy, it is only a few scattered individuals who must carve out their own time to pursue these ends, rather than whole classes of people whose lives were devoted to "the liberal arts." The argument is that democracy is a utilitarian society, which only allows for activities that are a means to an end (usually earning money)--the servile arts--and this leaves no time or space for those activities which are ends in themselves--the liberal arts that still stand out as the highest achievements of Western civilization. That's not to say that we should go back to feudalism, but it's interesting to note that democracy, for all its virtues, requires a tradeoff, and one that we may not have completely thought through. In our society, there is very little place for what Thomas Aquinas pointed to as a necessity: "It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation."

So what are the activities that are not means, but ends in themselves? It's worth asking whether we in American culture still even understand what it means for something to be "an end in itself." As one of my seminary professors said, "Sometimes I think we follow Jeremy Bentham more than we follow Jesus." (Jeremy Bentham was the British philosopher who advocated utilitarianism--the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined by its results, i.e., by its usefulness toward certain ends.) We are such results-oriented people that we have trouble thinking in any other terms.

I remember standing in the great nave of the beautiful abbey of Bath, England back in 2002, and saying to my fellow students that I would prefer worshipping in a small, nondescript modern building because the excess money could be spent on missions and charity. I didn't realize at the time that I was saying almost exactly the same thing that Judas said when he objected to the lavish extravagance of the woman spilling out perfume and anointing Jesus' feet (John 12:1-8). I was a utilitarian, like Judas, not understanding that that magnificent abbey was worth the cost of being built simply because it was beautiful. It was worth building because the act of building was, at least in part, an act of love for God. There are many things in life that are worth doing, regardless of the results that come from them. It is worth painting a picture, even if no one will see it. It is worth growing flowers in your yard, not because they make your house look better, but because flowers are beautiful in and of themselves. It is worth writing a masterful blog-article, even if no one will read it because you don't post often enough to maintain a regular audience, and when you do post, your blogs are ridiculously long. It's worth contemplating the mystery of the Trinity, even if you never figure it out (and you won't). Our God is not a utilitarian. He built a universe of astonishing beauty, crafting countless worlds that no human eye will ever see.

Perhaps our disease of utilitarianism is the reason why no one takes seriously the ancient and venerable Christian practices of voluntary poverty, silence, and contemplative prayer. These are awfully hard disciplines to undertake as utilitarians, because we have no idea what we'll get out of them, if anything. And so we willfully ignore Jesus' command to "sell your possessions and give the money to the poor" (which he gave not only to the rich young ruler, but to the whole community of disciples--Luke 12:33). We rationalize it away--"Wouldn't it be more effective for the Kingdom of God if I invested all my money and kept it growing so that I could continually be giving to the poor, instead of giving just once?" Maybe. But maybe an act of obedience to Christ is worth doing simply because it's an act of obedience, regardless of what comes out of it. (And I suspect that God may know certain positive "results" of a life of voluntary poverty and simplicity that we can't even imagine.) The same dynamic faces us when we consider silence and contemplative prayer. It's hard to follow the example of Mary and simply spend time quietly at Jesus' feet, listening and waiting in his presence. Like Martha, we want to be doing something. Those of us utilitarians who love prayer rush to intercessory prayer, where we feel we can accomplish something. And don't get me wrong, intercessory prayer is important--most of the times prayer is mentioned in the New Testament, intercession seems to be in view--but we can't underestimate the importance of simply being in the presence of God, quietly waiting and resting in him. All of Christian tradition speaks with one voice that this is an indispensable mark of the spiritual life.

Our utilitarianism can also be seen in how we approach ministry. Almost all of the books published on Christian ministry nowadays are on methods--on things we can do to further the Kingdom of God. And again, don't get me wrong--those things are important. We need to be active. But we don't need to be active to the point of assuming that the Kingdom of God depends solely on our activity. We need to recognize that this ministry is God's ministry before it is ours, and that while he does his work through us, he doesn't need us. The church would benefit, I think, from having more ministers whose first impulse is to seek the face of God in prayer rather than to constantly spin new strategies for church growth. If our ministry is a restless race to implement new programs, rather than a quiet trust in God's action and provision, then we must re-evaluate. I am not, of course, advising complete passivity. But I am advising us to understand that the church is God's church, and that the laity will benefit as much, if not more, from our times of contemplation in the presence of God as from our frenetic activities on their behalf.

Rest and Re-creation

So far we've been discussing the cultural problems with our attitudes toward work and leisure and utilitarianism, but now we come to the solution. What, exactly, should the pattern of work and rest look like for the Christian? And, at a deeper level, what does rest mean?

The first thing to note is that rest has been a central feature of mankind's relationship with God from the very beginning. Through his acts in creation, and again in giving the Ten Commandments, God ordained the Sabbath--one day in seven set apart for rest and worship. (Isn't it interesting that most Christians nowadays would agree that the moral principles behind the other nine commandments ought to be rigorously kept, while the actual observance of the Sabbath is either dropped altogether or reduced into a day of sloth?) In early Christian theology, the Sabbath took on a distinct set of theological overtones. Christians believe that the redemption wrought through Christ extends not just to individual human souls, but also (in some way yet to be revealed) to all of creation. The Bible speaks of the "new earth," and the prophets leave us with brilliant images of a renewed creation. The early church fathers spoke of this period of renewal as the "eighth day." God created the universe in six days, with humanity at the climax of the process. The Sabbath, then, was interpreted as the whole period of human history, in which God was resting from his creative action. This would lead up to the eighth day, when the renewal of creation would begin (but, interestingly, it will begin in reverse order, with the re-creation of humanity leading into the re-creation of the universe. Many of the fathers mark the events of the Gospel and Pentecost as the beginning of the eighth day, since that's when the renewal of humanity began). The Sabbath, then, is the anticipatory rest of God, making ready for the renewal of all things. In the same way, the fathers said, our practice of the Sabbath is a restful looking-forward to that great renewal. In this way of thinking, the Sabbath-principle instructs us that our rest ought to carry with it a taste of the world to come, a preparation for our re-creation. I love the fact that English has preserved this theological idea in the fact that our word "recreation" is, in fact, the word re-creation. Our recreation ought to center around those things that serve to re-create us into what God would have us be--the reflection of his character and glory, fully united to him.

So what are those ways of resting that prepare us for the coming renewal? Some of them are activities that the church has always practiced--worship and fellowship. Directing our time and our focus toward God and toward one another are what the Sabbath ought to be about. But there's another major practice that I want to focus on. I've mentioned it a few times already--it's what Christian tradition has called "contemplation." We believe that God is constantly speaking, constantly revealed in the things he has made. As such, we learn and grow as much by contemplation--by, as Heraclitus puts it, "listening to the essence of things"--as by the more active, logical means of learning. Contemplation is simply the practice of listening to God, just as Mary listened to Jesus. It is the practice of quiet rest in the divine presence, not trying to accomplish anything, but simply being there with God. Some of the most powerfully intimate moments in earthly relationships are those times of sharing a thoughtful, loving silence together, and it's the same with God. This patient, trusting expectancy is what draws us closer to him, and if two thousand years of Christian mystics are to be believed, this is what he uses to take hold of us, transform us, and unite us with the energies of his own being.

It should be noted that this is vastly different than what our culture thinks of as "leisure." As I noted above, most of our leisure is characterized by activity and distractions. Most Americans have a really hard time with just being quiet. We need the noise and bustle of music or banter or TV--something so that we don't have to face ourselves, or God, in the silence. True rest is something very different from our normal work, but it's also something very different from the way we Americans normally try to take our leisure. We often draw a false dichotomy between work and "wasting time," activity and laziness, but these all miss the mark. The true dichotomy, the true partnership, is between work and true rest. As the Benedictine rule has always put it, "ora et labora"--prayer and work. Laziness has more in common with unsettled work than it does with true rest. It is an evasion of ourselves, an attempt to distract ourselves from issues of identity. Unsettled work is similar--an attempt to define ourselves and shape our identity by what we do. But true rest is an exploration of our actual identity, apart from all we franctically try to make it out to be, and the only place to find it is in God.

True rest is a willful relinquishment of our personal sovereignty. We give up the delusion that our accomplishments are as important as we think they are. We give up the constant pressure to perform, and we enter the presence of God with nothing to prove, nothing to accomplish. In this way, true rest is quite a bit like sleep. Why are humans programmed to sleep? It serves its biological function, to be sure, but it also serves as a mandatory reminder that we are not in control. We must relinquish ourselves to the sovereignty of God each and every day, to let go and accept the fact that the world will not fall apart just because we've fallen asleep. True rest is like that. It is an acknowledgement that we are human, and that God is God. And in the practice of contemplation--whether it's silent prayer or meditation on the Word or a slow and thoughtful walk in the woods--we begin to see things as they truly are. And then, with that perspective, we realize that although our work is important, it is not as important as we've made it out to be. We realize that it is in detachment from those things that we hold dear, those things that we try to use to define ourselves--our work, our stuff, our family, our status, our accomplishments--it's in detachment from these things that we draw close to God.

A Season of Rest

These are lessons I'm still learning. These past few months haven't been one long, blissful moment of mystical contemplation. I've done my fair share of "wasting" time and cluttering my life with petty distractions. But I've also been able to pray now and then, to establish new disciplines in my life, to read and write and think without worrying that I'm somehow being a poor steward of my time. I've been able to pursue the contemplative life, to devote myself to those things that ought to be pursued as ends rather than merely as means. My hope is that when I return to work--the work of partnering with God's ministry in Calais, Maine--I'll be able to hold on to these perspectives, to take time for true, deep rest, and to put down my slow and tentative roots into the restful heart of God.

I'll close with a quote from Goethe: "I have never bothered or asked in what way I was useful to society as a whole; I contented myself with expressing what I recognized as good and true. That has certainly been useful in a wide circle; but that was not the aim; it was the necessary result."

Update - Pastor Job, Baby, and Book!

2009-11-21T15:38:00.000-08:00

A month or more ago, I promised an update on certain exciting new details in my life. So despite having had no job for the past three months, I'm only now getting around to writing it. (I'm also planning on posting another essay soon--a theological apologia for my present life of leisure, and on the meaning of rest in the Christian life.) Rachel and I have a lot of changes coming up. First and foremost is the happy news that we're expecting a baby, and the due date is coming up fast--Dec. 25. I've also recently accepted a call to become the pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Calais, Maine, and I'm very excited to enter more fully into the ministry of Word, prayer, and pastoral care. This means, among other things, that we'll be moving away from Colorado sometime near the end of January. And the third item of big news is that my novel, Freedom Cry, which has been delayed for awhile now, is just about ready to roll off the presses (you can see a rough early sample of the cover art on the sidebar of this blog).

As for the baby: so far, fatherhood hasn't been much of a stretch. But, I'm told, my responsibilities will be increasing exponentially pretty soon. It's been a fun journey so far--seeing the baby on ultrasounds, trying to pick out possible names (feel free to leave comments with any suggestions), and watching our apartment slowly fill up with piles of baby stuff. We decided not to find out the baby's gender from the ultrasound tests, so we'll wait and be surprised. One early surprise has been in discovering how passionately some people's feelings run on this decision. It's been interesting to find out that there are a lot of people (mostly young people, about my age) who find our decision incomprehensible. Then there are a lot of other people (mostly older people) who feel quite strongly that waiting until the birth is simply the proper and appropriate way to do it. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about it--I think I lean towards waiting to find out because of a fond, quasi-mystical nostalgia for sharing in the experience of humanity "as it's always been done." It's about the same feeling I have as on the question of burial. I usually think that I'd rather be buried than cremated--it's not as practical, but there's a certain consolation in knowing that I'm entering into a pattern of living out the great markers in my life as countless generations before me have done.

So, all that to say, we don't know yet if it's a boy or a girl. But it's been fun to watch Rachel's belly grow, to feel the baby move and kick, and to think about how our lives will be with this wonderful new addition to the family. The creation of a new person is a mind-boggling thing to me. Isn't it remarkable that this person will be one of the central figures in my life, and that I still have yet to meet him or her? It's marvelous to think that when I'm eighty, a great many of the people closest to me will be people who don't even exist yet. Even now, before our baby is born, I'm beginning to understand on an emotional level what the relationship of God is toward us--to have people created in our own image, to watch over and protect them in ways that they can't even begin to understand, to watch the slow development of their relationship toward us, to see them begin to return little hints of love in response to our unconditional love, to continue loving them even when they cannot earn our love, and, perhaps, to experience the pain of having them cast that love aside--but still we can do nothing but love them. And that is merely an example of God's love by way of analogy--while God's love can be compared to a parent's love, the love of God so outshines any created thing that it remains indescribable, beyond our ability to conceive.

The second major change coming up, as I said, is our upcoming move from Colorado to Maine, where I'll begin pastoral ministry in the small town of Calais. We visited the church on a candidating weekend at the end of September. We hadn't set our expectations too high, having had to turn down one church's offer already. But the church and the town won us over. It's a small-to-medium church, drawing from 100 to 125 people on any given Sunday, and I would be the solo pastor. That's just about the size I was looking for--small enough to get to know people like a family, but large enough to be able to do some neat things in ministry. We felt welcomed and loved, and it was enough like the churches I had grown up in that I felt comfortable in knowing my role and understanding the possibilities for ministry there. The town of Calais appealed to us, too--a small town (but actually bigger than the town I grew up in), right on the Canadian border and just a quick drive away from the eastern end of the Maine coast. It's on the edge of a wildlife refuge, a wide swath of wilderness that makes me feel right at home. All in all, we're very excited about planting roots in Calais and starting our ministry there. We'll be moving near the end of January.

And the final bit of news is that my book is soon to be published. I know I've been saying that for awhile now, but this time I think it really is. I've been working with the editor for the last few weeks on some last-minute changes, and all of the interior proofs and the book's cover art is ready to go off to the printers. So I'm excited about that, and if it comes out within the next few weeks I might even be able to do a few publicity events here in the Denver area before leaving for Maine. For those of you who may not know, Freedom Cry is a fantasy/adventure epic, a long, imaginative yarn that I wrote up just for fun--and now you can share in my fun if you like. This is Book #1 of the Hidden Kings Trilogy (books 2 and 3 are already done, but we'll wait for Freedom Cry to come out before starting their publication process). The trilogy developed into a fun little experiment of the imagination: What might the story of salvation-history look like if it were enacted in an entirely different world, with an entirely different history? The later books, especially book 3, focus on answering that question, but Freedom Cry serves mainly as a fun, fast-moving introduction to that world and its characters. I'll put up a more complete post about it as soon as it actually comes out.

On Music, and How to Be Human

2009-10-15T13:55:00.000-07:00

The past few months have been eventful--along with the fact that we're expecting a baby in December, we've recently accepted a call to pastor a church back in my home state of Maine, beginning next year. I'll post a blog about that in a few days. For now, though, I've been inspired (through a curious conflux of circumstances) to write about music--an area in which I have very little technical skill or knowledge, but which I enjoy tremendously. But this article isn't so much about the technics of music as it is about the meaning of music--and, particularly, the meaning of group singing in our culture and in the life of the church.

The Loss of Communal Song
Along with it being a wonderful day for a little bit of impromptu song-and-dance in one's slippers, I was driven to this line of thinking by my dear old friend, Mr. G. K. Chesterton (and, as you might guess, he's partly to blame for the winsome eccentricities in my writing-style today). One of the essays in his book Tremendous Trifles (a collection both hilarious and profound) dealt with his examination of a 13th-century picture which depicted a number of different workmen at work, and all singing as they worked. This led him to ask why those old and venerable occupations (fishing, seamanship, ditch-digging, etc.) all had a tradition of singing during work, while modern occupations don't seem to have the same impulse. He then began writing some songs which he felt could be put to use by bankers and postal workers, but they weren't very well received by the workers themselves.

But his point is well taken: where, indeed, do people sing together nowadays? It's not a common facet of our culture anymore--and I say "anymore" because so many premodern societies give group singing (and often dancing) a place of central focus in local culture. My favorite memories of my time in Africa come from times when I witnessed the joy of group singing. One such time was when a missionary supervisor arrived on site at our camp in Angola, and the local children assembled into an impromptu choir under the night stars and welcomed him with song. It struck me as a moment of mystical wonder, as if something of the spirit of heaven had broken in, for just a moment, to kiss the realms of men. Perhaps my reaction was just one of charm and delight in seeing an unfamiliar ritual, and no doubt that was part of it; but I also believe that there was something of the grace of God in that moment. Another such time came after I had preached at the service of an Angolan church, and in response, the young people of the church enacted an elaborate song and dance to thank us and send their love along with us as we left. How infrequent it is in our culture to even express in words our appreciation for someone else!--and this--this was a breathtaking leap beyond that, a gift of joy given in action and delight.

Those are, perhaps, uncommon examples, but I think they're only uncommon to us Westerners. For much of the world, singing together is a way of expressing unity and the simple joy of community, and it ought to give us pause that our culture has lost that most ancient of communal rituals. (I'm not trying to suggest that our ancestors' lives resembled a full-fledged musical; but with a little study into their culture, it's clear that music filled a very different role for them than it does for us; and for them it was an extension of community rather than a reflection of individual taste). The old traditions of communal singing are still around in a few forms, but just a few--in a certain breed of pubs, in Christmas caroling, and, most prominently, in churches.

The Virtues of Folk Music
We'll come back to the church-connection in a moment, but at this juncture I'd like to give a tip of my hat to that finest form of music in the world: folk music. What is folk music? It is (to steal a line completely out of context from Mr. Lincoln) "of the people, by the people, for the people." Folk music is the creation of a particular local culture in a particular place, usually designed so that all the people in that place can sing it together. Since there are all kinds of places, there are, of course, all kinds of folk music. My own tastes gravitate toward Celtic and Anglo-maritime folk music, but there are as many varieties of folk music as there are varieties of folk in the world. One of my favorite bands, Great Big Sea, hails from my corner of the globe--Maritime Canada, just across the border from my boyhood home in Maine. The music of Great Big Sea can be full of all the riotous ribaldry of sailors--drinking, loose women, and so on--but I forgive them these faults because of the one great merit of their work: they sing music born from the place they love, from a culture that loves to sing together, and the music itself beats to the rhythm of communal joy. This is the great virtue of folk music--it is the music of real humans in community with one another. More artistic forms of music--classical, jazz, and so on--obviously have their place, but they lack the raw power and thrill of communal participation. If I took my trombone to a classical concert and began to play along as I sat in the audience, my contribution wouldn't be appreciated (and not only because I'm a very poor trombone player). But if I went to a Great Big Sea concert or a folk-music singalong in a local pub and began to sing at the top of my lungs from my place in the audience, I would be accepted as part of the celebration, part of the music. Likewise, much of the popular music put out nowadays lacks the communal element. It's the creation of individual artists written for a vast and varied audience, and even if I try to sing at a rock concert, it doesn't matter, because no one can hear me--and it's not really about me anyway, just the performer. Folk music is the music of the whole gathered group, and that's what makes it special.

Local Culture and Loving One's Neighbor
Folk music is also a genre that carries with it the love of a particular place, a particular culture, and that too makes it special. But folk music is dying in America, mostly because we don't have any such thing as a "particular place" or a "local culture" anymore. Thanks largely to mass media, our local cultures are dying out, crushed by the gigantic weight of "pop culture." You can visit a town in California and a town in New Jersey and find the same stores, the same music, the same TV shows, the same spread of political opinions, the same sports and pasttimes. But it wasn't always that way. I've often heard people lament the fact that houses aren't built with big front porches anymore, and neighbors don't come visiting. Sometimes I wonder if we've lost a great deal more than we've gained since the advent of modern communication technologies.

Learning to love our own places and the people around us is important--tremendously important--and the fact that my own place is indistinguishable from a hundred thousand other places in this country makes it a little bit harder to love. But local culture isn't just a reason to love a place--it's actually an expression of that love. Building culture takes time and intentional investment in the people around us; and those places with rich local culture tend to be places that are also rich in neighborly love. Why am I putting so much stress on this? Because I think it's telling that Jesus teaches us to love our neighbors, rather than simply telling us to love mankind. There is a strong temptation for all of us to pass ourselves off as lovers of humanity, deeply concerned about the human rights violations in Darfur and Congo and China and North Korea, while never actually stooping to love our own neighbors. The truth is, it isn't possible to love "humanity" in the abstract. It isn't possible to love people that we don't know. We can be concerned about them; we can, through prayer, seek to share some of God's heart for them; but we can't love them. Love is only love when it is active and particular. We can't love people we don't know simply because we don't know them. Claiming that we love "humanity" is too often an unconscious excuse, releasing us from the obligations of active love, because the fact of the matter is that love requires something of us. Love requires us to meet another person, to get to know them, to put up with them even when they annoy us, and to pour ourselves into their lives. If we can't love those immediately around us, then we can't pass ourselves off as lovers of mankind. The beauty of local culture, then, (and the beauty of folk music) lies in its roots as an expression of obedience to the command of Jesus: "Love thy neighbor." To want to sing with our neighbors, we need to learn to love them.

Singing and Being Human
There is something peculiarly human about singing together. On the most basic level, we can observe that of all the animal life on the planet, only humans show such a vast and varied appreciation for the beauty of sound. Other animals sing, to be sure, but largely as a means of communication. It is only in mankind that there is a spark of something deeper, something that can recognize and savor the presence of beauty in a pattern of sound, and then re-create it in a thousand new forms.

On a deeper level than mere comparative zoology, though, singing together is an iconic act of humanity. We were created in the image and likeness of the Triune God, the unity-and-plurality, who speaks the Word to us. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer notes, communal singing is one of the few mediums we have in which we can proclaim together, in one voice, the mystery of the Word, and in so doing we reflect the original and ultimate Word-Speaker. The Trinity itself is rather like the harmony lines of a song--distinct, yet inseparable; all one thing, and yet in complementary roles; creating together a unity of breathtaking beauty. Singing together is an act of conscious unity that proclaims our likeness to our Triune Maker. It also demonstrates a theological principle which we are too often wont to forget--that human nature is, in some way, all one thing; that we are bound in a mystical (but very real) way to one another. So it is that the sin of one man has affected us all, and so it is that the redemption bought through one man may also affect us all--we are all connected. In our hyper-individualized society, singing together is that much more important, because it reminds us that we are all united to one another.

Let me give a more basic example of this principle that singing is an illustration of our humanity. As I've been writing, I've been thinking about musicals--those plays and movies in which much of the drama is told in song and dance. Musicals have a particular sort of charm because they are so unrealistic--random groups of strangers don't usually break into perfectly-choreographed routines together--but at the same time, they possess a deeper sort of reality. Through the symbol of song and dance, they illustrate our connectedness in a beautiful and winsome way. I think that many people find that compelling, because it speaks to a deep desire and joy at the heart of our humanness--the desire to be united with one another in beauty and celebration. Musicals are usually relegated to comedies or light dramas (although sometimes, as in the case of Les Miserables, rather more sober and heroic dramas), and one could even imagine, if we were more versed in the art of lament, a musical tragedy. But I cannot imagine a musical horror film. It would quickly descend into a farce. The reason, I think, is because horror films focus on beastly and twisted things--in short, on inhumanity. Horror films focus on the fear of the individual in the face of an inhuman force. And for that reason, one cannot have a musical horror film, because the act of singing together is entirely human, in the best possible sense. It is a heroic stand against the brutal inhumanity that so often tries to tear us apart from one another. In one of the many insightful passages in The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis paints demons as creatures that simply can't understand music. They can't comprehend the pattern, the beauty, the wonder of music--they only hear noise. Music--and particularly the practice of making music together--is a peculiarly human delight, and it shows us for what we were meant to be.

Singing Together as Christians
Happily, church is one of the few places left in American culture where people still enjoy and practice communal singing. I think it has survived the larger death of communal singing in our culture because we understand, at least at an unconscious level, that it's important. Most Christians nowadays would probably consider congregational singing as important because of its value in worship, but I think that if it were taken away and other forms of worship put in its place, they would quickly realize that communal singing was also important and beloved because of its expression of unity. It is a powerful representation, in flesh and blood and Word, of the theological principle that we are all one Body. As Bonhoeffer puts it: "It is the voice of the Church that is heard in singing together. It is not you that sings, it is the Church that is singing, and you, as a member of the Church, may share in its song."

Communal singing has been a part of the Church for as long as the Church has been around. The Hebrew psalms shaped the worship of the early Christians. Paul teaches us to speak to one another "in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs." Some of the most poetic passages in the New Testament are thought to have been hymns (such as the poem in Phil. 2). When John describes the scene in heaven in Revelation, it is almost always filled with song--the songs of the elders, of the angels, of the great crowd of the redeemed. Some of the earliest Christian literature we possess is in the form of songs (the Odes of Solomon). At least one of the early church fathers, Ephrem the Syrian, is known entirely through the collection of hymns he left behind. From those earliest beginnings up to the present day, churches have proclaimed together in song the truth of the Gospel. That's no accident or coincidence of cultural influences--it's because singing together makes a symbolic statement of our unity, allows us to reflect our Maker by creating something of beauty together, and pours the practice of mystic joy into what might otherwise be simple recitations.

For me at least, I never feel so connected with others as when I sing with them. The mere act of singing together, if entered into with the right spirit, I think enables and empowers us to love one another better. And the practice of loving one another is at the heart of the Church. I'm blessed to have as my in-laws a family that is rich in uncommon love, and I think that that love was fostered, at least in part, by their habit of singing together. They sing not to perform, but as an expression of their unity, their joy of being together, and their love for one another. They were sung lullabies as children, they sing grace together at the table, and at each family gathering there always seems to be an impromptu hymnsing. While I don't have the ear for harmony that they do, I love this practice of beauty and joy that they share in their singing. And it was the same with many of my college friendships. During one of my first weekends at Houghton College, the group of honors students that I was with was assigned to hike into the woods, build a fire, and cook a meal together. That was all well and good, but it wasn't until after all those things were done, and we were sitting around the fire singing songs together, that I knew I was in the company of men and women who would be my lifelong friends.

Congregational singing in church is important, and I hope that churches begin to recover the understanding that this is more than a medium for each individual's worship of God; this is something we do together. And the simple fact that we do it together makes it important. Too often we worship in church as if we were alone, dutifully ignoring our neighbors. I rather think that it would do us good to look at one another as we sing, to stand in a circle as we raise our praise to God, because there is joy in knowing that this is a together-act. There's a popular piece of worship music out there right now called "Prince of Peace." It has its merits in tune and content, but I think the real reason why people love it is because it consciously forces us to the realization that we are singing together, as one. Men and women each have a separate part, and then come together on the last line in unison. It's wonderful and compelling, and I think its great appeal is that it's a worship song that one person can't possibly sing alone. That song tells us that we need each other, and there is tremendous joy in worshipping together, in creating something of real beauty with one another.

At the end of his essay, as he pondered why communal singing had vanished from the modern world, G. K. Chesterton tells how he wandered by a church, and heard them singing inside: "They were singing anyhow, and I had for an instant a fancy I had often had before: that with us the super-human is the only place where you can find the human. Human nature is hunted and has fled into the sanctuary."

Thoughts from the Fathers: The Meaning of Salvation

2009-09-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple years I've been reading a fair dose of the early church fathers' writings, as well as a few secondary sources on their theology. Specifically, my reading has included Athanasius, Augustine, John Cassian, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory the Great, Ephrem the Syrian, Maximus the Confessor, Irenaeus of Lyons, Basil of Caesarea, Origen, Pseudo-Macarius, Aphrahat the Persian, and Eusebius of Caesarea. I take the time to list them merely to point out that most of my readings have focused on the eastern end of the early Christian world. (Only two of my sources--Augustine and Gregory the Great--fall securely in the western tradition. Two others fall somewhere in the middle: John Cassian lived and worked in the West, but his thought was derived almost entirely from the eastern desert fathers, and Irenaeus of Lyons, though also in the West, grew up in the East and developed a theology that was carried on largely by the eastern tradition).

In the midst of this reading, what I discovered from the East was a theological milieu that developed and flourished with some very different points of emphasis than the western-Christian theology that I was familiar with. And those differences struck down to the very root of the Gospel. I grew up with the normal evangelical-Protestant understanding of salvation: humans are sinful, including me, and my sins have separated me from the all-holy God; those sins need to be paid for somehow, or else I'll be damned to spend eternity in hell; and so, because of his love for me, and to save me from hell, Jesus paid the price for my sins; now that my sins are atoned for, I can be accepted by God and spend eternity in heaven. That's overly simplistic, of course, but that's the gist of it.

But the Eastern Fathers had quite a different way of looking at salvation. They didn't seem to talk about sin as much as good evangelicals do. In fact, although they acknowledged sin as a problem, they didn't seem to talk about it as the root problem. And they had a different sense of the goal of salvation--although they would acknowledge the fact that whether an individual spends eternity in heaven or hell was part of the answer, their solution was more all-encompassing. And while they focused on the cross of Christ, they also made a much bigger deal over other aspects of Christ's life--the fact of the Incarnation itself, the Resurrection, and the Ascension--each one integral in their theology of salvation.

I'll try to trace out the basics of the Eastern Fathers' view of salvation, now largely carried on by the theology of the Eastern Orthodox churches. First of all, the problem of humanity is sin, death, and Satan. Sin, in the fathers' view, is both a description of the human condition and of an individual's actions. Urged on by Satan, sin is what causes spiritual death; and now that spiritual death is in force over humanity, sin is as much a symptom as a cause of our separation from God. While we evangelicals speak of the problem of sin largely in legal, penal terms--sin as a crime against God, a crime that must be punished or atoned for--the fathers prefer to speak of it in relational terms--sin as separation. So now, enslaved by sin and Satan, we are separated from God and subject to death, both spiritual and physical. In the fathers' view, this element--death--is much more the problem of humanity than is humanity's ledger of sinful crimes against God's authority. But, on the whole, it's just a different point of emphasis than the evangelical view.

But here's where the fathers' theology adds a few elements that might be a bit less familiar to us. Since separation from God--which is the very meaning of death--is the problem, the solution as revealed in Jesus Christ is a solution defined by the overcoming of that separation. Thus, the very fact of the Incarnation is foundationally more essential than even the events that arise from it--the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. And to understand how the Incarnation accomplishes the annulment of our separation from God, we must step outside of our western individualism for a moment. The fathers conceived of human nature in a mystical sense, as something that all humans everywhere share--it is the stuff of our being, that which defines us as human beings, and it means that we are all connected to one another in a very real and essential way.

In the words of Gregory of Nyssa (Catechetical Orations): "It is the same for humanity as a whole, which forms, so to speak, a single living being: the resurrection of one member extends to all, and that of a part to the whole, by virtue of the unity and cohesion of human nature."

Because all humans share collectively in "human nature," the fact of the Incarnation means that humanity itself has been united with the Divine life. Human nature--the very human nature that is essentially connected to you and me--was taken into the life and being of the Godhood in the person of Jesus Christ. As God and Man, he shares in our humanity. And we, by extension, may share in his divinity.

Gregory of Nyssa (Against Apollinarius): "The Word, in taking flesh, was mingled with humanity, and took our nature within himself, so that the human should be deified by mingling with God: the stuff of our nature was entirely sanctified by Christ." And listen to how Irenaeus describes the purpose of Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection, in terms of union and "absorption" rather than in terms of sin and atonement: "This is the reason why the Word of God was made flesh, and the Son of God became the Son of Man: so that we might enter into communion with the Word of God, and by receiving adoption become Sons of God...How could we have united ourselves with immortality if immortality had not become what we are, in such a way that we should be absorbed by it?"

It is at this point that we evangelicals run up against a doctrine that's awfully hard for us to swallow: deification. Instead of pointing to the goal of salvation as individual redemption from the punishment of sin, the fathers, almost unanimously, point to something more breathtaking and all-encompassing--the envelopment of human beings into the life of the Godhood itself. While we would not lose our individual essence and nature, we are granted to share in the deepest energies of the life of God himself. The fathers, from Irenaeus to Athanasius to the Cappadocian Fathers, emphasize this to the point where they regularly speak of Christians "becoming God"--that is, sharing in his very life. In the words of an anonymous Easter Homily inspired by Hippolytus' Treatise on Easter: "God has shown himself as man and humanity has ascended and become God!" While it takes some careful, thoughtful reading to get to the heart of what the fathers are really saying when they spout what sound like blasphemies to us, this doctrine has grown more and more appealing to me: How great is the love of God, that he would not only forgive us, but gather us in to share in the depths of who he is in a union so intimate and rich as to defy description!

And all of this, though also supported by a few references from the NT epistles, comes mainly from the idea of the Incarnation itself--the union of humanity and divinity in Christ as the firstfruits and sign of the union that we may someday enjoy with God. By Christ's intimate union with us, he has bridged the separation between man and God. The Crucifixion, then, is largely his act of union with us--embracing all the murder, depravity, and violence that lies at the heart of fallen human nature. It is his act of undergoing death--taking head-on the deepest curse of our separation from God--and defeating it, thus opening the way for all humanity to share in the Resurrection, both spiritual and (eventually) physical. (By contast, with merely a penal substitution model of the atonement, we're forced to reduce the meaning of Resurrection to a "sign" of Christ's victory, since the main work of gaining forgiveness for sins had already been accomplished on the Cross.) As Cyril of Alexandria says, "He put on our flesh to set it free from death." And in the words of Gregory of Nyssa: "He mingled himself with our being to deify it by contact with him, after he had snatched it from death...For his resurrection becomes for mortals the promise of their return to immortal life." And this is all echoed by Gregory of Nazianzus, "Is it not evident that the Father accepts the sacrifice [of Christ on the cross], not because he demands it or feels some need for it, but in order to carry out his plan? Humanity had to be brought back to life by the humanity of God...It was necessary that God should take flesh and die so that we might have new life...Nothing can equal the miracle of my salvation; a few drops of blood redeem the whole universe!"

The Ascension is the final act of this wonderful drama--it is the ultimate symbol of what Christ has done for humanity, bringing it into the presence of God in heaven. As Christ the God-Man shares in the divine communion of the Trinity, so do we also share that communion, because we share in Christ's human nature. Maximus the Confessor writes: "Christ, having completed for us his saving work and ascended to heaven with the body which he had taken to himself, accomplishes in his own self the union of heaven and earth."

So that's the picture that the fathers paint for us--a picture of salvation that is much more than merely the forgiveness of sins, but rather of the dynamic union of humanity and divinity, an act of love that welcomes us to share in the life and nature of God himself. I present these thoughts not as a challenge to the evangelical gospel and the penal substitution model of the atonement--I don't think they're mutually contradictory. But I do think we may have settled for one rather small piece of a much grander picture. It's worth considering. It's worth reading the Fathers to explore for yourselves.

"Vision" and the Church

2009-08-25T16:45:00.001-07:00

Over the past few months, I’ve been in the process of interviewing for pastoral positions. It has been a harder process than I imagined. For the first six months there was no response from anyone at all, and then, in the past two months I’ve had so many possibilities that it’s been hard to decide between them. That may sound like a nice problem to have (and in a way, it is), but the process of trying to discern the Lord’s will and to make a wise decision on the basis of scanty knowledge is incredibly difficult. We’ve already decided to turn down one offer from a wonderful church, and that may have been the hardest decision I’ve ever made. In the end, we just weren’t sure we were the best fit for the church, and we didn’t have a sense of peace or God’s leading to go there.

In any case, along the way I’ve noticed a few patterns in the things that churches nowadays are looking for. First and foremost, in the case of many churches, is “vision”—the hope that the pastor will provide some of this mysterious goal on behalf of the church. In some cases, I’ve been struck with the impression that pastoral search committees aren’t even quite sure what “vision” is—they only know that it’s some special leadership commodity that they can’t do without. In other cases, churches seem to be over-the-top in ascribing the foundation of their life together to the power of a communal “vision”.

What does it mean to “cast a vision” for a church? From what I can tell, it means that one is expected to discover and communicate a picture of what the church ought to be—maybe five years down the road, maybe ten. A “vision” is a picture of what the church could be. Maybe it’s focused on the deeper discipleship of its members, maybe on a more vital prayer-focus or on a deeper commitment to world missions. Usually, it includes some aspect of being more evangelistic in one’s local community. Once the “vision” is in place, churches will articulate it in a “purpose statement” (or a “mission statement”), along with a list of clearly-articulated “core values.” And, if the church is really focused and on track, it’ll also produce a set of goals and benchmarks to guide their journey toward fulfilling their vision.

I don’t want to come across as too harsh against these concepts. They can be tremendously, tremendously helpful. There’s great value to having a cohesive, easily memorable statement of communal purpose. However, my initial reaction is one of critique. Some churches carry this too far. Take these statements from the webpage of a church I was looking at: “Determining why you exist and what you value are the first steps in realizing God's perfect plan for a church. Without a carefully focused purpose and a set of clearly articulated values there is no foundation upon which to build….[And] a purpose without a clearly defined set of core values can lead to chaos.” This is rather high-flying rhetoric, and I object to it on a number of levels. Beyond my initial skepticism that God even has a “perfect plan” for each church (I rather think that God works alongside us in all our choices, as we submit them to him for his blessing), I object to the fact that this kind of statement usurps the proper place of Scripture and the Holy Spirit in the guidance of the church and puts statements of our own devising in their place. Now, obviously, that’s not what this church was intending to do with its purpose statement and core values. But it bears asking: what if the purpose statement inadvertently omits some part of the Scriptural mandate for the Body of Christ? Wouldn’t it then become dangerous to follow, even if the things it aims for are good? What if the core values become expressions of a particular church’s culture rather than an expression of the biblical model of what a church ought to be? (And again, what if they exclude certain legitimate aims of the Body of Christ?)

In short, I find myself confused as to why such great import is placed on the issue of vision by so many evangelical churches nowadays. Frankly, the vision for each and every church should be pretty much the same: to worship and glorify God together, to grow in the likeness of Christ as individuals and as a Body, and to reach out effectively in evangelism and service to those outside the church walls (three categories that describe the upward, inward, and outward dimensions of church life). If a vision is to be biblically faithful, I tend to think that it will be so basic and straightforward that any biblically-literate church member should be able to articulate it off the top of his head, even if they’ve never seen an actual vision statement before. I would rather have a church whose members could quote Scripture than a church whose members could all quote the purpose statement and core values. The ethos and purpose of a church should be shaped by the Word of God, and the purpose and vision of the church will spring up from that endless well of authority and guidance. The danger of allowing our own words to take precedence in the church’s life, even if we think they’re a faithful synthesis of Scriptural teaching, is that we will almost always over-emphasize or under-emphasize some necessary aspect. Scripture, on the other hand, through which the Holy Spirit continually speaks, is a flawless guide to faith and practice. It challenges us away from our own ideas of balance, constantly bringing up new facets of church life that we’ve never seen before. It will surprise us and convict us—which the vision statements that we make up on our own hardly ever do.

Here’s a simple instance, one that I preached on recently: in more than one place in the New Testament, we’re exhorted to confess our sins to one another. But the evangelical traditions I’ve grown up in almost never do this. We confess our sins to God, but not to each other. And because we’ve grown up in that tradition, we’re often blind to a necessity that Scripture clearly places before us. Very few evangelical churches list this as one of their core values: “We are a church that confesses its sins openly and freely to one another.” But maybe we ought to be doing just that. The point is that our purpose statements and core values will be inherently narrow and myopic thanks to our natural blind spots, while the Scripture is the only proper guide to church life, because it constantly challenges us to rethink how we ought to live out the Christian life.

Another critique: most vision/purpose statements, as I’ve come to know them, tend to place too much focus on one part of church life. In most evangelical churches, the vision puts its focus on mission/evangelism and discipleship. These are good and necessary, to be sure. But I think it’s a bit too narrow, and it starts in the wrong place. The purpose of the church begins with the glory of God. Our purpose is to worship God, to walk with him as a community, to enter his presence with joy and thanksgiving, and to be transformed by him. Our vision and purpose begins with worshiping God for the glory of who he is and what he has done. Churches who focus exclusively on evangelism and mission often end up being frustrated and feeling guilty at their lack of growth. But if we truly understand that the purpose of the church begins in worship, then what we do every Sunday morning, simply by gathering together and entering the presence of God—regardless of how many people are in the sanctuary—is ultimately valuable and important. From that initial purpose grows fellowship and discipleship. As we are transformed by the presence of God, we become more and more the image of Christ to one another and to the world. Fellowship and brotherly love are part of this process—growing in love with one another, not merely growing closer to Christ as individuals. And then the third purpose, of course, is mission and evangelism, and it flows out of the other two. But the point is this: most vision statements fail to capture the full dynamic, and of course no vision statement (even my little summation in this paragraph) matches the vision for the church that we receive from Scripture’s own words.

I’m also hesitant to jump on the bandwagon of the absolute necessity of vision statements simply because it’s such a new movement. Don’t get me wrong: I can see why it’s helpful. Clearly-articulated goals do help most people to move toward the Scriptural vision of the church. Without the leadership of the church setting out goals for, say, a new evangelistic program, that program probably won’t get done. But what I object to is the modern tendency to make “vision-casting” one of the fundamental, irreplaceable aspects of church life and pastoral ministry. Historically speaking, such an assertion is ludicrous. Isn’t it remarkable that the church survived (and actually grew) for more than nineteen hundred years without vision statements! Read any of the great classical texts on pastoral ministry; you’ll find virtually nothing on the topic of vision-casting and setting goals for the church. Rather, you’ll find the emphasis on other aspects, where I heartily believe the emphasis should be: the ministry of the Word and Sacrament; of teaching the Scriptures, praying, caring for individual members of the flock with spiritual guidance, and leading the church in its communal worship. The current emphasis on “vision,” “purpose statements,” “goals,” and “core values,” all comes from 20^th- and 21^st-century business-leadership models. It never existed in the church before that.

So I won’t deny that such things are helpful, but come on—let’s not pretend like these things are the foundation of everything that we ought to be doing as a church. Leadership is important, to be sure, but it’s the duty of the whole congregation, as it is bathed in the Scripture and led by the Holy Spirit, to grasp and pursue the biblical vision for what the church ought to be. If only the pastors and leaders are expected to be doing that, then we have a church that is mightily impoverished. Give me a church that’s looking for a classical pastor—a minister of the Word and Sacrament—who will partner with that pastor as they all pursue together the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the Scripture; that’s the kind of church I want to be a part of. As a pastor I do hope to be a leader-among-brothers, to guide the congregation in its understanding of Scripture and to help in setting goals and pursuing a vision of what it can be. But my allegiance is first and foremost to the Scripture and to the pastoral office as it has been shaped over countless centuries, not to the whims of every new organizational fad that our culture produces.

Update

2009-07-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

You again have my apologies for my recent lack of posts. My muse for writing essays and poetry still seems to be on vacation somewhere...

But, speaking of vacation, I thought I would add a little update on my current situation. Rachel and I are currently on a month-long trip back to our families on the East Coast (made possible by the fact that Rachel is a teacher, and so has the summers off, and that I'm enjoying the blessings of unemployment). The past couple months have been busy for us, even in lieu of schoolwork. I graduated from my program at Denver Seminary in May, and have spent the time since working long shifts at my job in the library, reading books on history and science, and plugging away at a couple writing projects.

I recently finished the first draft of the final novel in my fantasy trilogy, and was fairly pleased with how it turned out. (I've written a few posts over the past couple years in defense of fiction and fantasy literature, in case you haven't seen those yet). Now I'm working on a new novel that's sort of a spinoff of the trilogy, mostly for my own pleasure. But it should give me a good practice-ground for some intentional efforts at honing my writing skills. I'm also starting the long work of revising the second novel of the trilogy. I gave some thought to trying my hand at nonfiction prose, but I think I'll wait awhile on it. Most of the people around me who know of my writing encourage me towards devotional/contemplative works or putting down my thoughts on culture and religion. I've tried a few times, but I inevitably run into problems. The first is the sense that I'm not quite fit to be writing books on such things. I'm only 26, and some of those topics--particularly the devotional/contemplative life--require long seasons of reflection before anything worthwhile can be said. I also tend to lack inspiration for writing such things. I can do snippets, poems, and essays, but to write a book-length treatment of any serious subject seems to be beyond me at this point. I could do a book of unrelated essays, I suppose. And maybe there's a place for that. But I usually have to work hard at essays. When it comes to the sort of writing that just flows out of me when I sit down at a blank page--it's always stories. Not essays or thoughts or anything else, but stories. Part of the joy of stories is that they can be entirely new, whereas sometimes it feels like there's very little new material to be added to the corpus of nonfiction books out there (unless one is a specialist in an academic field, which I'm not). The other hindrance to writing books on culture or the devotional life is that I get the feeling, at this point at least, that they could never possibly measure up to some of the other works out there. Why would I want to write a book on a subject that has been written about a hundred times, with most of those books being far better than what I could produce? If any reader were to ask me whether he ought to read my book on the devotional life or Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, I would immediately direct him toward the latter. So maybe somewhere down the road I might throw together some nonfiction prose, but for now I think I'll stick with stories.

Through a series of random happenstance, though, writing has come into focus for me as potentially a larger part of my life than it has been in the past. I always wrote stories largely for my own pleasure and enjoyment, and I still believe that's the main goal my stories should meet (I really don't know what other rule I could test them by, anyway). But I've begun to consider the possibility of taking my writing a little more seriously--not necessarily to try to make a career out of it, but to treat with a bit more conscientiousness the gifts that I've been given. For the first time in my life, I've undertaken a rather rigorous program of reading and writing with the sole aim of making my writing better. As one author (Mark Twain?) said, "Easy reading is damn hard writing. "When it comes to writing-style in adventure stories, I tend to think that the main goal is to get out of the way of the reader--to make one's style fluid enough to be unnoticed. Too many young writers try to weave intricate styles that end up getting in the way of the story and slowing down the reader. Writing ought to be beautiful, of course, but the beauty of style ought to be, at least in my mind and for the genres in which I write, subservient to the beauty of the story and the characters. And even in adventure stories, there are plenty of places to weave in the harmonic, lyrical styles that we writers itch to spin. But it takes discretion. The main goal of any writing style is to highlight the story, and at certain points in the past I think my writing has tended to obfuscate the story--more by ignorance than by an intentional effort at artistry, though. Anyway, all that to say: I'm currently working on honing my style. Hopefully it will bear some good fruit in my future books. Along with my fourth fantasy book, I'm also spinning a bit of a darker, more contemporary tale at the moment. I don't think it will be a long book, but I hope it will be good--the tale of one man's face-to-face encounter with tragedy, and his long fall from faith.

On the whole, though, writing is still a side-endeavor for me. I hope I'll be able to put it to good use in the future, but my main pathway is still aimed at pastoral ministry. Rachel and I will be interviewing at two churches while we're on our trip back east (and there's a possibility that we might also be able to meet with a third church), so we're excited about that. Hopefully something good will come out of it, and the Lord will lead us to a place where we can grow and flourish alongside a local church. I'm really looking forward to the rhythm of preaching, teaching, prayer, and pastoral care, and we're hoping to find a church that's stable and gracious enough to give me room to grow and develop into the areas in which I don't yet have much experience--leadership, administration, and so on. If pastoral ministry was the NBA draft, I would think that church scouts would say of me, "A bit of a young and unpolished player, but he's got potential." So what we need is a church who's not looking for the already-got-it-all-together answer-man (the veteran All-Star player), but a promising draft pick who will grow alongside them in the journey of following Christ. I hope to grow into a great, capable pastor-leader, but, having never been a full-time pastor yet, I can't honestly say that I'm there yet. That will have to come with time. But I'm excited about these interviews, and what the Lord might have for me in one of these places. All in all, then, it looks to be a promising month.

We're also, as most of you probably already know, expecting the birth of our first child this December. We're very excited, of course. I find myself blown away by the grace and goodness of God. Looking towards being a head pastor for the first time feels a lot like looking toward being a father for the first time--jumping into the wild unknown, full of pressures and expectations and stresses that I can't even yet fathom, and yet suffused with an incomprehensible joy, a sharing in God's delight, that makes me tremendously excited.

I think that's about all I have to say for now. I probably won't write another post until mid- or late-August, when we're back in Colorado.

The Wonder of It All - A Look at Christian Mysticism

2009-05-30T13:59:00.001-07:00

What is mysticism? This question came up recently in a conversation with my friends. We’re reading through G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy together, and in the early chapters Chesterton sets mysticism as a necessary alternative to the tyranny of pure logic. For all of Chesterton’s whimsical defense of mysticism, though, I’ve found that many Christians—particularly evangelical and fundamentalist Christians—are deeply suspicious of mysticism, and, I am convinced, often misunderstand it.

In most of the places I’ve gone in the past few years, I’ve gained a reputation as being a mystic. Part of that reputation, I would hope, comes from the place of prayer and contemplation in my life. But I think that part of it also comes from the mere fact that I’m a quiet, reflective guy. I would hope to be a mystic in the truest sense of the word, but I’m not sure that I’m there yet.

So let’s dive in and look at some of the prevailing notions of Christian mysticism. The difficulty in describing it is that there’s no established “school of mysticism” that defines the boundaries of this particular “brand” of spirituality. With the exception of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, “theologians” have not usually been the same thing as “mystics.” And since most Christian mystics do not have the theologian’s natural tendency to write out the basics of mysticism in a systematic manner, defended by Scripture, it has been subject to the vagaries of anyone’s opinion and has, too often, been made infamous by the excesses of its more extreme forms.

In fact, “theology” and “mysticism” are often seen on a popular level as being polar opposites. During my semester in Tanzania, one of my fellow students asked some of us whether we considered ourselves theologians or mystics, under the supposition that everyone related to God in one of those two ways. “Theologians” were those who operated on an intellectual level, their faith defined by rational assent to doctrine. “Mystics,” on the other hand, were those whose faith was characterized by the affective, emotional, and experiential elements of a “relationship with God.” Unfortunately for that student’s dichotomy, I’ve always considered myself to be both a theologian and a mystic, and it’s from that dual perspective that I approach the matter.

A few notes at the outset: we’re dealing here with Christian mysticism. Other religions also have mystical aspects to their spirituality (such as the Sufi movement in Islam), and these mysticisms have some surface similarities to Christian mysticism. However, Christian mysticism developed independently from all these other religious traditions (with the possible exception of classical Neoplatonism) and arises directly from Christian beliefs and practices. Christian mysticism has nothing to do with New Age practices or yoga or Buddhist meditation. It comes, rather, from the earliest days of Christian history and has carried through to the present age, represented by such giants of the faith as the Cappadocian Fathers, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, John of the Cross, John Wesley, A. W. Tozer, and Mother Teresa, to name only a few.

Since there is no agreed-upon definition of mysticism, I will attempt to explain my own understanding, drawing from the best of the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions. As such, this is in part a defense of mysticism as a necessary and fundamental part of the Christian life, but I’ll also include a few critiques of some of the extremes of mystical spirituality. It may be, then, that my definition of mysticism is broader than that of most of its critics, which only associate it with the wilder versions that have cropped up now and then. However, a broadening of the popular conception of mysticism is important because there is too often a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Because of the abuses perpetrated on good Christian theology by some of those who practice the extremes of mysticism, the whole system of faith and practice associated with the mystical tradition is rejected. I think this is a mistake. Even here at Denver Seminary, where there’s a very good Spiritual Formation / Soul Care program, it often gets looked down on by many of my fellow MDivs as “loopy,” “flighty,” or just plain wrong. And that is, I think, to their own detriment. Theology without mysticism loses its sense of wonder and often dances dangerously close to intellectual pride.

Mysticism is, in short, the expectation of encountering and being transformed by the mystery of God. As one author puts it, it is a “preparation for and consciousness of a direct and transformative presence of God.” It is an all-encompassing outlook on life that expects to find God in all things, even in the loneliest and darkest of desolations. The mystic is the one who is willing to be surprised by God, who doesn’t just use the lingo of “a relationship with God,” but actually expects that relationship to be authentic and transformative. It will be unlike any other relationship one has, and it will take all of one’s life, but it will be a relationship nonetheless—an actual encounter between two real persons (for more on this idea—the ways in which a relationship with God is unlike any other relationship—see my blog post for Sept. 25, 2008). Mysticism feels a sense of perpetual wonder at the beauty and mystery of God, understanding that there will always be a sense in which the nature of God, as infinite and holy, is hidden from us. Mysticism moves to the cadence of poetry in the soul.

Popular misconceptions of mysticism focus on peripheral phenomena like visions and dreams. It is often assumed that mystics are those who pursue an emotionally-focused spirituality marked by bizarre encounters with God in ecstatic trances. It is regarded with suspicion because it appears to be largely subjective—in one person’s direct encounter with God, the claim might be made that that constitutes a form of special revelation of comparable authority with Scripture. (And, on a few occasions in history, a few mystics have made that mistake.)

However, these criticisms are largely misplaced. Even though some of the more famous mystics achieved their notoriety through visions (Julian of Norwich, for example), most mystics would emphatically say that mysticism really isn’t about visions or dreams at all. Such ecstatic phenomena are certainly a possibility in an authentic relationship with God, but they aren’t the main point. Such things are gifts from God, to be received with joy and then left behind. It is a mistake of some mystics (and some forms of Pietistic and charismatic Christianity) to desire these mountaintop experiences of God rather than God himself. John of the Cross, one of the definitive voices of the mystical tradition, is adamant in his Ascent of Mount Carmel that visions are to be accepted as gifts, and then ignored and left behind. There was a popular spiritual movement in Spain at the same time of John of the Cross that made the pursuit of dreams and visions its centerpiece, and the great mystic rebutted them fiercely. In mystical spirituality, the authentic experience of God is far more often found in the desolations and after the long, hard battle of a “dark night of the soul” than in ecstatic visions. Julian of Norwich, in her Revelations of Divine Love, admitted that she ought not to be considered more advanced in the Christian journey than others on account of her visions—rather, she speculated that there were many common believers, even in her own parish, who were closer to God than she was because of their humble, ordinary devotion and prayer. Ecstatic phenomena often draw the attention of the critics of mysticism, but most mystics would agree that it really isn’t about the dreams and visions at all.

Neither does mysticism focus primarily on emotions. As with ecstatic phenomena, emotions may be (and usually are) an important part of the mystical experience, but they’re not the main point. The main point (as we’ll see below) is one’s growth toward union with God. Emotions are associated with this journey, but not always the warm, fluffy, loving emotions that critics focus on. Classical mysticism acknowledges that along with the consolations (the positive emotions of love and acceptance that come with a relationship with God), there are also desolations—the dark times, the absence of fond emotions, the desperate lack of a sense of the presence of God, and the overwhelming sorrow and pain of that deprivation. (A contemporary example of this is Mother Teresa’s long journey through emotional desolations). These desolations are just as common and just as necessary to the mystic’s journey as are the consolations. These emotions, while not being the main point of mysticism, are nonetheless important. They are not pursued in and of themselves, but they are accepted as a natural part of the process. Human beings are affective creatures, and it is unreasonable to assume that genuine Christian faith can be undertaken without touching the depths of our emotion (a point made beautifully by Jonathan Edwards in his magisterial Religious Affections).

So if mysticism isn’t about visions or emotions, what is it about? Drawing on the classical model of the spiritual journey used by John of the Cross (among others), mysticism is about the journey of the believer toward God. It deals with the process of growing in maturity and intimacy with God, toward the ultimate point of union and (in some mystics’ thought) an unmediated experience of God himself. But the process is usually lifelong and involves the deep transformation of the believer. The classical model has been described in three stages: Purgation (learning discipline to rid oneself of sinful habits), Illumination (deeper intimacy and maturity, along with the slow reformation of the sinful nature into a nature aligned toward God), and Union. The third stage, mystical union with God (or, in Eastern Orthodox thought, “theosis/deification”—the stage of sharing in the energies of God’s own life), is only experienced by a very few people in this earthly life.

In the thought of both Luther and Calvin, “union with Christ” is absolutely central. For them, however, union with Christ is an already-accomplished state for ever Christian. In that light, the mystical journey is not so much a journey into an ontological state that we didn’t before possess, but rather a journey into the experiential fullness of what has always been our possession and birthright as believers. Evangelicals, who tend to be skittish around terminology like “union” and “deification” (misreading them as implicating a change in one’s ontological essence), gravitate more towards descriptions of the goal of the mystic journey as “the deeper life” or “the practice of the presence of God” (in the famous phrase of Brother Lawrence).

For my own part, I think the classical three-step model of the mystical journey is instructive, but I’m not entirely convinced that it’s authoritatively true of everyone’s relationship with God. Other traditions that border on the mystical have slightly different systems (such as the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition, with its emphasis on a second work of grace and the pursuit of “Christian perfection”). On the whole, though, the picture and aim is the same—a journey into deeper relationship with God. It may come more naturally for some than for others, but it is open to all. Whether or not there is the promise of a dramatic, transformative event or encounter, each of us can certainly grow in maturity and intimacy with God. While mystical union may come only to a very few, the possibility of living life as an ongoing, continuous conversation with God is open to everyone, and that’s a goal worth pursuing. Rather than being criticized as something foreign to biblical Christianity, this view of mysticism ought to be desired by every believer. It presents a view of the Christian life that is not limited to rationality and duty, but extends to the territory of relationship, transformation, wonder, and beauty.

On the other side, however, a few critiques of some points of the mystical tradition are in order. It’s true that mystical experience can be dangerously subjective. (Some famous mystics, such as Meister Eckhart and Madame Guyon, have wandered into theological positions that were ultimately condemned by the church as heresy.) And for this reason, mystics ought to take great caution against the temptation to make their personal experiences normative for others. If the revelation of some new message is involved in a mystical encounter with God, it must be recognized that such revelations are always subject to the overriding authority of Scripture and the church. It should also not be assumed that the descriptive systems of various mystics are to be made prescriptive—that is, one ought to read systems like the 3-step journey of classical mysticism or the Seven Mansions of Teresa of Avila as descriptive of the mystic’s own experience (and thus instructive and helpful for us), but not necessarily prescriptive as the normative pattern which all Christian journeys must follow. Sometimes evangelicals who appreciate mysticism also try to prove that these systems originate from Scriptural paradigms, which is usually an error. As far as I can see, the New Testament does not outline any specific step-by-step process toward Christian maturity which is true of all believers.

Mysticism sometimes also errs in assuming that the methods of its greatest proponents are the normative methods for all Christians. That is to say, it is often assumed in mystical circles that prayer and contemplation are the only acceptable way by which one can proceed in the Christian journey. But I don’t think that’s quite true. Just as God made us all to be different in personality and temperament, there are various methods and ways by which we grow closer to God. For some, time spent in nature is an element of growth. For others, it’s journaling. Or study. Or acts of service. It’s not only monks to whom the mystical journey is open.

Further, some mystics go to the unfortunate extreme of claiming that reason can’t get us anywhere. But that’s obviously false. Reason is a gift of God, and tremendously useful in learning and growing in the Christian faith. The position of classical Christian mysticism is simply that reason is not the be-all and end-all of faith. Reason can’t move us, all by itself, into deeper relationship with God. We need the actual presence of God himself, not just knowledge of him. To use the famous example from the life of Thomas Aquinas, the brilliantly logical theologian and writer of the Summa Theologica: toward the end of his life, Thomas experienced a revelatory vision of God, after which he said, “All that I have written seems like straw to me.” Reason can’t get us all the way there—we need the presence of God—but that doesn’t mean that reason is useless, either. Seven centuries of church history have proven the inestimable worth of all that Thomas wrote. We need a balance of reason and experience.

These caveats, however, are not so strong that we need to look askance at the whole mystical tradition. To those that have experienced the breath of mysticism in their lives, the wonder and truth of this all-encompassing spirituality is evident. Mysticism pursues a deep and lasting relationship with the God who loves us. The shape of that relationship will undoubtedly look different for each of us, but it’s open to all. In short, mysticism takes doctrine—the belief that we are the beloved children of God—and makes it dance.

Update on the publication of my novel

2009-05-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

I recently got in contact with my publishers, OakTara Fiction (who, although it's true that they've been busy, haven't made much effort to be in clear communication with me about this process). It turns out that the process of re-issuing all of the novels previously put out under the Capstone Fiction name has taken longer than they anticipated, so the publication of all newly-contracted books (including mine) has been pushed back to the "summer and fall." That doesn't give us a very firm timeline, but at least we know that it will be a few more months. It's a bit of a disappointment, since under the original terms of the contract, my book should already be available for sale. But, considering that I'm really little more than a first-time author, writing in a strangely unmarketable genre (Christian fantasy), I really have no cause to be anything but grateful that I'm being published at all. Anyway, I just wanted to send out this update, for those of you who've been wondering when Freedom Cry would be in print and available.

The Doldrums of Affection

2009-05-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

It's been too long since I've worked on this blog. It's not that I haven't had the time, really. It's just that my muses for writing seem to have gone silent for now. I've been keeping busy with a few independent research projects, exploring the exegesis of Origen, the history of canon-formation, and certain aspects of Eastern Orthodox theology. But for some reason, the impulse to write has been lacking. Maybe it's a result of coming towards the end of my seminary career, and feeling like I've had enough of writing reports and papers for awhile. It isn't just a disaffection for essays, though--I haven't been writing poetry either. This has been the longest dry spell of poetry for me since I started penning devotional poems during my freshman year of college. So, faced with this dearth of poetry, I (somewhat ironically) decided to write a poem about it. I've posted it below. In my experience, my poetry usually comes either from the deep wells of intimacy with God or from the difficult crisis-moments of my life, so I examine those factors in this poem. While it's mostly about the dryness of my writing, it also reflects something of my feelings in the midst of a difficult season of looking for work and not finding anything.

I have no poetry in my soul...
Strange, that it should go
And leave me wondering where it's gone.
Am I too distant from God, the Fountainhead of song?
Or am I too much at peace,
Too content with myself
And with the present moment?
One would think peace a good thing,
And yet it leaves me dry--
Caught in my journey from angst to joy,
I rock here in the doldrums of affection,
With no breath of God to spur me on.
A strange void, but not unpleasant...
Still, what I would give for a wind!

Why I Haven't Joined Facebook (Thoughts on Friendship and Self-Knowledge)

2009-03-20T20:47:00.000-07:00

I’ve been asked a few times recently why I haven’t yet joined Facebook (an online personal networking site). It seems I’m one of the last surviving holdouts of my generation. So I thought I would offer here a brief defense for my willful neglect of this newest technological marvel, using it as a case study to examine the underlying philosophy of the technologies that shape almost everything we do. (Because of the length of these thoughts, I’ve posted the latter piece as a separate blog-article below. If you’re only interested in the reasons for my status as a Facebook virgin, then you don’t need to read the second post. However, in my opinion, the second post might be more worth reading, simply because most of our philosophy of technology is unconscious, and it does us good to consider it directly). It should be noted at the outset that, having never actually used Facebook, I’m in no position to offer a critique of it. Rather, this is intended to be an exposition of my own reasons for ignoring it—it’s not an argument for why no one should join.

Facebook is, as I understand it, a site that allows people to post their thoughts, activities, pictures and so on, and it offers easy connections to other “friends” and their posts—thus allowing a quick, efficient, and ever-accessible means of connecting with the people we like. My reasons for ignoring Facebook are numerous—some I’d like to think are kind of noble (and those are the ones I’ll focus on here), and a few are probably quite selfish. Let’s start with the potentially selfish reasons. First of all, I have very little desire to use Facebook, which makes motivation a problem; and second, no one has yet convinced me that I need Facebook. The desire probably stems from my introversion. I enjoy and appreciate people, but I seldom feel the need to seek new ways to connect with more of them. I tend to dodge mediums that would force me to interact with people more than I already do. I prefer to invest deeply in a small number of significant relationships in my immediate context than to spend my small reserves of social energy by interacting with growing numbers of acquaintances. That may strike some people as harsh and antisocial, but the truth of the matter is that if I stretch myself too thin by reaching for a greater quantity of personal interactions, the quality of the personal interactions that I really care about will probably diminish. (That’s simply the dynamic of introversion—I love people, but they wear me out, so I need to be conscientious with how I use the social energy that I do have.)

This leads me to one of my great concerns about Facebook—that it enhances the superficiality of relationships, already a growing problem in American culture. Being aware of the minutiae of everybody’s life does not automatically make relationships more significant. If anything, it may make them more trivial, leaving little room to focus on the deep heart-matters of true friendship. One of my deepest concerns is a very simple thing—the semantic impact that Facebook is having on the word “friend” for my generation. From what I’ve observed, it seems like Facebook (to the extent that I allow it), encourages everyone with whom I’ve ever had a conversation to become my “friend.” Contrast this with my understanding of friendship (an understanding that I would defend as the classical meaning). I have a very small circle of people whom I consider “true friends”—some family members, some college buddies, and a couple others—no more than ten people in all, and only two or three here with me in my current station of life. These are rich, precious friendships, in which almost anything can be expressed. They are infused with love, respect, and deep appreciation.

Every once in a great while, there is the opportunity to reach a level beyond true friendship—a partnership that used to be called “soul friendship” by the Celtic monks of the 1st millennium. The pre-eminent biblical example of this would be David and Jonathan. Soul-friendships are usually long-term, deeply committed, and it’s hard to have more than one at a time. But they are immeasurably rich and transformative—havens of peace and loyalty, strength and honor, adventure and joy. While it might sound like this level of friendship requires deep gushes of heartfelt emotion, that’s not necessarily the case. There will be a pleasant fondness and an openness to emotional and spiritual sharing, but it’s really all about being who we truly are with someone else. That’s not as easy to do as it sounds, which is what makes soul-friendship so rare. (While it’s possible to reach the place of soul-friendship with one’s spouse, my impression is that it’s actually more common with a friend of the same sex.)

A step below true friendship, I have a broader circle of “social friends”—people who run in the same circles, people whom I enjoy and am comfortable with, and who could, under the right set of circumstances, become true heart-friends. For me, this circle is also small, only slightly larger than my group of true friends. And many others are what I would call long-term acquaintances. Acquaintance-relationships are pleasant and enjoyable, but there’s very little deep investment in one another’s life. I’m open and accessible to helping acquaintances, even in very deep and personal ways if they need that kind of attention, but there is no assumption that that depth will be long-term or that there will be any reciprocation.

My observation is that the majority of Americans have a lot of acquaintance-friendships and probably a few “social friends,” but very few have learned the art of investing in true friendship. That’s not the case with everyone of course, but my impression is that I, despite my introversion, have more and better “true friendships” than the vast majority of the American population. Many, I suspect, have never had a true friend in their entire lives, to say nothing of having a soul-friend.

The sad truth is that American culture encourages this weakening of friendships. One major cause is our mobility. School and jobs pull us hundreds of miles away from our homes, and many Americans, even when settled into a career, will make major moves at least two or three more times in their lives. Technology has blessed us with the ability to do this, opening up opportunities that we wouldn’t have had in our original home areas. However, that blessing does not come without a cost. For most Americans, the “extended family” is a nice idea rather than an experiential reality. And because we move so much, we will inevitably leave behind large numbers of the friends we make in any particular place. While it’s possible to maintain a “true friendship” from a distance, it’s not an easy thing to do, and its quality suffers greatly from the separation. (And I’m convinced that it’s actually impossible to maintain a long-lasting soul-friendship from a distance).

The anonymity and self-sufficiency of American life also deals a blow to the classical experience of friendship. Most of us have very little need to rely on friends for anything in our lives. Even in our emotional distress, we can dull our souls with the narcotics of television and Internet entertainment rather than sharing that pain with anyone else. It’s far too easy to forego communal “play” with friends in favor of the pleasant comforts of our own sofa, our own TV.

A third cause is the trivialization of American life. A great mass of the population is losing touch with the things that are truly important in life, thanks mostly to the effects of mass media entertainment and the general spiritual malaise. The deepest we go now is merely the level of personal, emotional pain. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that emotional pain is unimportant. I am a firm supporter of the value of counseling and psychotherapy in many circumstances. But I do think that we are far more aware of our emotional woes in our psychologically-driven culture than most other cultures in the world have been. They are not unimportant, but they are taking over our lives in a dangerous and aggressive way. The breakdown of friendships allows for the cancerous spread of isolationism and emotional disease in our culture. Part of the reason, I suspect, is because we’ve lost our fluency in the things that go even deeper than emotional pain—the things of the spirit. We’ve lost the genuine community that would allow us to blossom into our full humanity.

So what does this have to do with Facebook? My feeling is that Facebook implicitly cripples our understanding of friendship by allowing the outer two circles of relationships—social friends and acquaintances—to fill the role of “friends.” This is certainly not intentional on Facebook’s part, but the plain fact of the matter is that it is not a good engine for the growth of deeper relationships—either true friendships or soul-friendships. These latter categories of friendship require time spent together, face-to-face interaction that will often be neither immediately accessible nor convenient. I worry that many in my generation are substituting Facebook-friends in place of true friends.

That’s not the case with everyone, of course, and there are people out there with enough social energy and wisdom to maintain a host of Facebook contacts at the same time as investing in deep, meaningful, true friendships. But in my case, that wouldn’t be the way it would work. If I gave in to its draw, Facebook could suck the life out of the relationships I have here and now. I care deeply about the friends I have elsewhere, but to be honest, I would rather connect with them face-to-face or through a more substantive medium sometime in the future than to see every random picture of their lives here and now. And here’s an intriguing point to consider: I’m not communicating any less with my friends in other places now than I was before Facebook came along. That indicates to me that the sort of interaction and catching-up that happens on Facebook is probably not worthwhile now, because it apparently wasn’t worth the effort before.

I’ve also heard the argument that Facebook can be a good forum for significant interactions over ideas, philosophical inquiries, and the like. That’s more attractive to me, but I remain dubious. In my experience, online interaction is about the poorest forum possible for genuine idea-driven discussions. It’s too easy to hide behind false facades; too difficult to see the facial expressions or the vocal inflections that would tell me what this idea actually means to the person I’m debating. Ideas are not just ideas, static and independent. They are born in the fire and wind of each individual heart, and without that personal connection, the meaning of the idea loses some of its luster. And it’s far, far too easy to misinterpret positions stated in online writing. It’s too easy to take offense at comments that were not intended to be offensive. It’s too easy to be angry and lose the common courtesy that we would have if we were speaking face-to-face. Even the email-discussions I sometimes have with close friends can go misunderstood or misinterpreted, and often end up either stalling or turning out to be hurtful. Unless each member of the discussion is a very, very good writer and a master of self-control, I would think that personal interactions are far superior to online interactions in almost every instance. If I feel the need for a good philosophical discussion, I (yes, even I, the introvert extraordinaire) would start a book club or a discussion group in my community rather than enlisting in an online polemic-fest.

The final appeal that I hear being made is the appeal to ministry. The argument goes like this: “Because you’re a minister of the Gospel, especially a minister who enjoys interacting in writing and ideas, then you ought to be on Facebook. That’s where the people of this generation are connecting, and if you want to connect with them, then that’s where you have to go. If you want to speak transformative ideas into their lives, then that’s where you need to do it.” This is somewhat more compelling (so compelling, in fact, that because of it I won’t rule out the possibility of my joining Facebook sometime in the future, perhaps as a way of touching base with kids in my church’s youth group). But I still don’t buy it. In my view, online connectivity as a means of genuine personal connectivity is a bust. For all the ways that we can now connect, Americans (and especially young Americans) are more lonely and isolated than ever before. It seems to me that there are two options—to use Facebook as a ministry-tool and so touch a lot of young people on an idea-driven basis, or to invest in personal relationships that offer not only idea-driven transformation, but the whole broad radiance of genuine person-to-person contact that reflects the image of Christ. Now, as I said, some people could probably manage to do both options in their ministry; I doubt that I can. And since the potential for personal transformation is so much higher in the latter option, that’s where I’ll put my focus. The danger for me is that Facebook, because it’s an online forum and therefore somewhat personally distant, will feed my introversion. For me, it’s the easy way out—to throw random ideas at people from the isolation of my own home and tell myself that that counts as “doing ministry,” rather than taking the courageous step of choosing to be actually involved in someone else’s life.

At the heart of it, while I have reservations about the cultural implications of Facebook, it comes down to knowing my own weaknesses. Facebook would encourage my introversion in relationships, allowing me to believe that online connection can substitute for true friendship. It would allow me to say, “It’s okay for me not to have any true friends here, because I have so many ‘friends’ that I’m connected with in other places.” It would also stroke my narcissism by giving me a place to post about myself all the time. There are sweet and poisonous dangers involved in having a place to construct one’s own identity through “friends” and personal preferences. For some reason, I don’t believe that the trivial details of everything I do during a day are actually worthy of anyone else’s consideration (and I’m under the impression that if I did start to believe that, I would be in serious danger of the deadly sin of pride). So again, this isn’t a critique of Facebook per se; rather, it’s an exploration of the ways that Facebook would be an unhealthy influence for me in my personal relationships and spiritual growth.

So that’s my defense. If there are any compelling virtues of Facebook that I need to reconsider, then please bring them to my attention. Otherwise, I’ll leave the Facebook world to its furious connections and instead take up the adventure of pursuing true friendship with those around me, here and now.

Technology Is Not Neutral

2009-03-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

When it comes to critiquing new technologies, especially media technologies like the Internet or TV, one often hears a common argument: “The medium itself is morally and socially neutral; what matters is the content.” This underlying philosophy is the reason why concerned parents are worried about the sex and violence in their children’s TV programs and video games, rather than being concerned with the TV or video games themselves. We tend to accept new technologies rather blithely into our lives under the unspoken assumption that they aren’t good or bad in themselves; rather, the messages they carry are what have moral and social significance.

I would like to oppose that philosophy in this post. Technology is not neutral. Although the content of a particular medium is important to consider, we need to be aware of the ways that the medium itself shapes our lives. As the great media-critic Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.” The clearest instance of this is television. TV is producing a cultural revolution in Western civilization at least comparable to the impact of Gutenberg’s printing press. (And, astonishingly enough, the advent of the Internet may have an even deeper impact in the long run). TV is moving us away from a culture of words, rationality, and focused, linear thought to a culture of images, emotion, and rapid-connection, multitasking thought. Consider what television has done to presidential elections—now not only are such rational marathons as the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates utterly unthinkable, but “image” and personal charisma is at least as important in a candidate as wisdom and discernment. Entertainment is replacing the acquisition of knowledge as a primary focus of life. Our cultural quest is now aimed at experience rather than truth. All of this happens almost regardless of what the content of a particular TV program is—it’s inherent in the nature of TV itself. (The best book to read on this subject is Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death).

It’s actually a fun little exercise, and quite profitable if you have a good imagination and an understanding of history and culture: imagine what our society (or your own life) would look like without a particular technology. Take Microsoft Word (or any word-processing system), the program I’m using to write these thoughts right now. What was writing like before the advent of word processors that allowed in-text editing? Or even before typewriters (some of which also allow in-text corrections)? This is a bit of an exercise of the imagination for me, which gives you a clue as to my young age. Writing without a word processor is a whole different discipline. The rules of grammar and spelling and style are the same, but the process is very different. Here on this computerized picture of a piece of paper, I’m able to spit out thoughts with astonishing speed, and I can revise them whenever and however I want. There’s no need to go back, to rewrite and rewrite until my writing becomes good. I can just patch it up here and there until it’s satisfactory. Writing without word processing would be a slower, more thoughtful process. I would be far more careful with the words I choose. I would think about how I put them together before I actually write them, because if I didn’t, it would mean hours and hours of lengthy rewrites. Is word processing an efficient tool? Of course. Does it make me a better writer? I sincerely doubt it. I think I would be a better writer if I had been trained to write without it. So is Microsoft Word neutral in value? No, it’s not. Simply by its nature, it affects the process and philosophy of writing.

Another example would be cell phones (yet another new-technology area in which I am proudly ignorant and lacking in experience). Cell phones have their benefits, of course—we are all immediately available all the time to one another. When important issues or emergencies come up, we don’t have to worry about whether or not we’ll be able to reach someone. However, the mere fact that we’re all now immediately available to one another is restructuring our society. Our definitions of privacy are being redefined. There is an assumption that because we can be reached by cell phone, we ought to be willing to be reached. Because we are always available, our time and attention ceases to be entirely our own. (Whether it ought to have been considered “our own” at all is another question; the point here is that cell phones are redefining the previous social dynamic of privacy and personal accessibility). Again, this all happens regardless of what is spoken over the phone; it’s inherent in the nature of the technology itself, and it takes an intentional personal philosophy of cell phone use to overcome that inherent tendency.

A few more examples might help to illustrate this principle. Take the technology that records music and makes it marketable to consumers. Until just about a hundred years ago, one needed a musician or a singer, and probably some instruments, to produce music. It was an exercise both in individual artistry and in communal identity. But with recorded music as a mass product, music has lost some of that original meaning. Now it is primarily used in our culture as a means of creating or expressing personal identity. It is an expression of our preferences and tastes as individuals. Even at most concerts nowadays, especially in genres other than classical or folk, the music is an expression of individuality. A concert is a communal gathering, to be sure, but no real community takes place—it’s just a collection of individuals who all have the same personal taste in music, expressing that taste in the anonymity of a crowd. Music has thus lost some of its communal magic. Very seldom is it used anymore as the artistic expression of a local community of people. To understand the true power of music, one needs to join a jam session or a hymn-sing, where music becomes not just a consumer product, but something beautiful that we create together.

One final example might serve to make the point, and this one requires a bit more imagination—what does the technology of reading and writing take away from the experience of being human? We all assume literacy to be an unquestioned good (even those Americans who don’t make much use of it), but when reading and writing first appeared on the scene, they were not always welcomed with joy. For example, the advent of literacy ended (or at least radically changed) the age of the epic poem in ancient Greece, putting the bards and singing poets out of their jobs. Because of literacy, a great art form (one of many that live in oral cultures but not in literate cultures) began to die. More importantly, though, reading and writing changed the way people perceive and acquire knowledge. Because of the ease of gaining new information through reading, old ways of learning were swept out the door. When one could read books on any and every subject, there was not quite the same draw to experience the art or craft for oneself, to be tutored in wisdom and knowledge by our parents and our elders. Where literacy is present, the power of local community as a medium for knowledge is compromised. We begin to see knowledge and understanding as the key to our problems. People buy self-help books, looking to find that until-now-unknown bit of knowledge that will henceforth revolutionize their lives. It doesn’t happen, so they buy another book, hoping to find the magical knowledge there. And so on, and so on, until their shelves are full of worthless books. Or they go to counselors, seeking to gain a deeper understanding of their problems. These are important things, but they fail if practiced on their own. Pre-literate human culture reminds us that knowledge itself is not enough—we must act. We must learn wisdom from the hands and feet of those who are walking the trails ahead of us. And from their example, we need to take action. It’s easy to feel spiritual by reading books about spirituality, but precious few buckle down and practice the hard work of asceticism or intercessory prayer. Reading and writing have such power as a medium—regardless of their content—that they shape our lives and perceptions in all these ways.

Technologies like these are part of the fabric of our lives, and too often we completely ignore their effects on our lives and culture. With each new technology, it’s appropriate to ask the question, “What will we lose?” This is a useful exercise even with those technologies that have been around for ages. What did culture lose with widespread use of the clock? The interstate system? Geographical maps? The Internet?

I’m not arguing that these technologies are bad (obviously, I’m quite a strong fan of reading and writing). Rather, the point is that they have consequences on human culture. These consequences are often unintended and, to a large degree, they proceed without most people taking note of them. But their effects are staggering. So with each such technology, it’s worth asking about those unintended consequences, and then balancing them against the obvious potential benefits. It’s worth asking, “What does this technology do to shape the human experience? Does it help to make me more fully the person that God intended me to be, or does it hinder me toward that goal in any way? Is it a technology that I can control and use as a tool, or does it have the capacity to control and shape me?”

Even if we continue to use these new technologies, this awareness will enable us to practice greater self-regulation and to search for new ways to preserve those areas of culture and human identity that would otherwise be lost. Because we’re aware of the detrimental effects of TV, we can be disciplined about exercising our minds through other, more linear and rational mediums. Because we’re aware of the individualizing nature of mass-marketed music, we can take steps to make music a conscious part of our communal experience. In the end, the best question when faced with a new technology is not, “Is it useful?” or “Is it pleasant?” or even “Does it help me do this job better?” Rather, the best question is, “What will I become because of this?”

Scattered Thoughts (Fiction, Adventure, the Pursuit of God, and Hell)

2009-02-09T14:47:00.000-08:00

To my few regular readers, you have my apologies for my neglect of this blog over the past few weeks. Much of my free time has been spent in writing--finishing and revising the third book of my trilogy, the first installment of which is set to come out from OakTara Fiction in the next few months. It was gratifying to finish the project, which has been the focus of my creative writing for the past four years. (And many thanks to my brother Josh for his work in reading, editing, and making suggestions for the manuscripts).

- Among many Americans, and especially among Christians, one of the first questions that comes up against my hobby of writing fiction is "Why waste time making up stories when you could be writing about true, practical, this-world issues?" Unfortunately, this attitude seems to be widespread among Christians, and it comes at me even more sharply when it is revealed that not only am I writing fiction, but I'm writing fantasy. There is a fear encouched here that fantasy is nothing more than time-consuming escapism. Sadly, much of the fantasy on the secular market probably is just that.

But if we neglect fiction--even fantasy fiction--I think we lose a great deal of potential insight. This is especially true for pastors and other ministers of the Gospel. Our position necessitates a certain level of understanding of the human condition and its widely varied experiences. The truth of the matter is that I only get to live one life here on Earth, and so far it has been a pretty steady road for me. I have no intimate, experiential awareness of a broad swath of the tragedy and trials that afflict the great majority of humanity. Fiction helps fill that gap. By reading fiction, I can walk through experiences that are foreign to me, experiences which teach me more about what it means to be human. It challenges me with a perspective on life that is not my own. It provides a wealth of illustrations, drawn from fictional experience, to illuminate the underlying tensions and challenges of my own life. In the engagement of fiction, we are presented with the question that so powerfully arises from the dark circumstances of Defoe's Moll Flanders: "What would you do?"

Further, fiction allows us to represent the questions of faith and philosophy in concrete, rather than abstract, form. Most of us learn truth better from stories than we do from syllogisms, and stories often have a peculiar ability to transcend the level of explanation available in any syllogism. To use an example cited by C. S. Lewis, the tragedy of Oedipus Rex challenges us to consider the relationship between free will and determinism in a way that no philosophical debate ever could.

Fantasy, as a genre of fiction, has great potential for these benefits, since its horizons for creativity are practically unlimited. It is possible to use fantasy to devise scenarios which would presumably never happen in this world, but which speak with deep profundity to the problems we encounter here. As a writer, fantasy also gives me the rich joy of reflecting God's act of creation--to build an entire world, complete with people, cultures, languages, and so on. I would like to say that my fantasy novels actually fill out their potential in terms of the benefits outlined above, but I fear I have a long ways to go before I ever produce anything that could be considered a "classic" in any of these constructive senses. My project, rather, is mainly to tell an entertaining story, woven throughout with themes of faith and virtue. It is, in broad view, an experiment in imagining what the story of redemption might have looked like if it were enacted in an entirely different world. That, I think, certainly has intrinsic merit, since the story of redemption will always produce something of value. On a smaller scale, my stories are also an attempt to show "virtue in action." Most of us will never have to face the trials and adventures that I put my characters through, but such dangerous circumstances have a way of clarifying the confusing mix of choices in life, and so adventure provides a good stage for the unveiling of virtue.

- In a sense, though, fantasy can be a form of escapism for me, and I have to guard against its influence. I am possessed by an exploratory nature, a wanderlust that thirsts for adventure and, too often, becomes discontent with the normal flow of everyday life. Perhaps some of it comes from growing up on the mission field--there is a thirst to constantly be seeing and experiencing some new corner of creation. This tendency overflows to a number of my interests. Take history, for example. While I'm a fine student, and could probably make a fair professor of history, I doubt I could ever be a true historian in the sense of a scholar who delves into the stories, thought, and culture of a particular age until he knows it through-and-through. I couldn't do that. I love history, but I love it for the stories. And when I've already learned the major characters and stories in one particular corner of history, I tend to move on to find new stories somewhere else. So writing fantasy can be escapism for me--when my own life fails to provide any adventure, and when I'm not in a position to create adventures around me, then I can retreat into the worlds of my own creation and devise whatever sort of adventures I please. But this is only problematic, I think, insofar as it detracts from my engagement in the here-and-now, and I have enough of a sense of self-awareness to keep a firm hand of discipline on that impulse. The real question will be whether the settled life of ministry will be able to long survive my adventuresome wanderlust (I really feel no attraction whatsoever to a life of quiet American domesticity). I think ministry will survive that impulse--at least I'm hopeful it will--for a number of reasons. First, I'll be dealing with the Word of God each week, and I have found, to my great delight, that its horizons for leading me into the adventure of God are unbounded. Second, I'll be interacting with a community of people, and communities have a tendency to produce their own adventure. From what I know of pastoral ministry, there's usually enough going on to keep one's interest up. Third, as long as I'm in a place with access to a slice of wilderness open to my personal exploration, I'll be fine. Nothing is quite so restorative for me as trailblazing alone through a patch of woods, and if I have access to such a place, then I think my restless nature will be satisfied. And fourth, I have enough of an appreciation for a slow-and-steady pace of life, enough of a delight in tradition, that I think the ministry might be a good fit for me. I have an adventuresome heart, true, but it's ruled fairly well by reason, good sense, and an appreciation for the simple joys of life. Give me a choice between risking my life in extreme sports merely for the sake of adventure, or a life behind a desk in a quiet study, and I'll choose the latter every time.

- Benedict Groeschel has written that in his observation, many people encounter God along the lines of the ancient philosophical categories: the One, the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Those who seek and experience God as the One tend to be those in search of personal integration, aware of conflicting forces within them (the example given was Catherine of Genoa). Those who seek God as the Good are generally gentle, joyful people who easily become emotionally broken in encounters with the brokenness of the world (Francis of Assisi). Those who seek him as the Beautiful are, obviously, lovers of beauty (the young Augustine), and those who seek him as truth are often engaged by the intellectual and philosophical side of the faith (Thomas Aquinas). I don't know if this breakdown is exhaustively true of human experience, but it's certainly interesting. For my part, I tend to pursue God around the dual poles of Beauty and Truth. My thirst for beauty is such that I have what might almost be called a mystical experience whenever I'm out in a particularly lovely corner of nature--there is nowhere else where I feel so near to God. I drink in beauty in wordless wonder, and it pours out of me in poetry and song. Interestingly, the sins which most easily beset me are associated with this undying pursuit of beauty--they take the proper object of that thirst, God, and redirect its passions to seek beauty elsewhere. Truth is also important for me, and provides a secondary means by which I seek and experience God. Being something of an intellectual, I take great joy in learning new things about the world, about human experience, and about God himself. Beyond my roving wanderings in the woods, a book is the next best thing for me when it comes to igniting my heart for the pursuit of God. Paradigms like Groeschel's can be valuable, both for understanding the character of our own relationship with God and for reminding us that the person in the next pew over might well experience God in a very different manner than we do, and that that's quite alright.

- I've been thinking quite a bit about hell lately, thanks to a research paper for my "Ecclesiology and Eschatology" class. In particular, I've been pondering the fate of the damned. Traditionally, there is one main view--the damned are condemned by God for their sins at the Final Judgment, then cast away into an eternity of conscious torment. One may say quite easily that God's justice is linked to his love, and that because of his love for the redeemed, he will do justice to the oppressors. However, this view neglects to take into account the fact that the Bible tells us of God's love for all people (including, one would suppose, the damned). If the traditional view of hell is a reality, then it would seem that God would have to stop loving the damned at some point. This becomes difficult, because we know that the very character of God is Love, and that God's character does not--indeed, can not--change. It would also seem, at least from our limited perspective, that a punishment of unending, conscious torture for as little as one sin would be a punishment that does not fit the crime. (Defenders of the traditional view would say here that because God is an eternal God, a crime against him requires eternal punishment. This appeal to logic seems to me to be a stretch, though. If the Bible said nothing about hell as eternal conscious torment, would these theologians still devise such a system and defend it as a logical necessity?) Further, we regard physical torture, even of the most evil people, as a horrendous deed here on earth (now clearly prohibited by all standards of international law). The earthly leaders who practice ongoing torture as a means of punishment are regarded not as particularly awesome, but rather as villains and despots. If we magnify this to an eternal scale (with God as the authority), would the values actually reverse to the point that physical torture becomes a good rather than an evil?

These are not easy questions to answer, but they are important to consider. Although the traditional view of hell has held sway for most of church history, there are some leading lights who have questioned whether this doctrine might actually impugn the character of God (Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and, in our own day, John Stott). It is also good to consider that the traditional view of hell leans almost completely on a legal metaphor of the atonement (sin as crime), rather than a Christus Victor or healing metaphor (sin as captivity or disease). There have been a number of attempts to challenge or moderate the traditional doctrine down through the years. One such attempt was universalism (the belief that all will eventually be saved, perhaps by undergoing hell as a purgational stage), but that has largely been condemned as unbiblical by church tradition (there are some biblical hints toward universalism, but not enough to build it into a proper dogma of the church). Another is annihilationism, which holds that sinners will be snuffed out of existence by God rather than condemned to eternal torture. Others hold to the possibility of different gradations of punishment in hell (so that Gandhi would find himself in a pleasanter hell than Hitler). Some will also talk about hell as being something that we choose rather than something which God sends us to. This sounds nice, but runs contrary to the biblical evidence which shows God as the one who judges and condemns.

All things considered, it's no easy question. Following an evangelical hermeneutic of Scripture, I find that I simply cannot get around the "traditionalist" passages in Scripture which seem to support an eternal conscious hell. Is that the end of the debate? Perhaps, but perhaps not. I find the emotional and philosophical arguments for the other positions very compelling, and they have some intriguing biblical arguments as well. I find myself hoping for universalism in the face of my adherence to the biblical picture of eternal conscious torment, but overall I'm content to say that God is wiser than I, and that whatever he does in the end will certainly be right and good.

For me, it comes down to two main applications as a minister of the Gospel. First, hell is such a difficult question that it ought to be handled carefully and with great empathy. Despite all the teaching about hell in Scripture, there is a great deal that we simply don’t understand about it. The traditionalist position appears to have the strongest biblical argument, but it often comes across as repulsive and extreme. It may be the case that our perspective here on earth is limited, and that in the age to come we will be able to see and understand hell in a way that dissolves all our objections. Until then, I think the advice of John Stott holds true: “We may, and I think we should, preserve a certain reverent and humble agnosticism about the precise nature of hell, as about the precise nature of heaven. Both are beyond our understanding."

Second, while we can retain some agnosticism about the exact nature hell, we must be clear about the reality of hell. Jesus did not teach so extensively on the subject for nothing. Sinners must be told that there is a judgment coming and that the eschatological punishment will not be pleasant or tolerable in the least. The Bible is clear that hell is a horrible, terrifying end. While we ought not to abuse the doctrine by trying to scare sinners into repentance, we must hold fast to our responsibility to warn them. The Gospel is good news for those who believe, but there is also an element of warning—perhaps even “bad news”—that needs to be told. We must remember that the Gospel will always be an offense to sinful human sensibilities, but that does not mean that it ought not to be proclaimed.

(If you're interested, I have my full 20-page research paper on this subject if you'd like to look at my analysis in more detail--just drop me a note, and I'll send it to you.)

Fractals and the Beauty of Denominationalism

2009-01-06T22:51:00.000-08:00

I recently watched a PBS program on fractal geometry, focusing specifically on a particularly famous fractal known as the Mandelbrot Set. My forays into the world of mathematics ended with high school, so I can’t offer any detailed analyses of fractals. As I understand them, though, fractals are geometrical patterns which result from sets of numbers, generated by a simple equation and then placed on a graph. Because these numbers come from the same equation, they produce “self-similar,” replicating patterns—patterns that replicate to infinite detail. This produces mathematical oddities such as a bounded geometric shape, which on the large scale clearly looks finite, but whose border is infinite in length. The most famous is the Mandelbrot Set (pictured here), produced by the original fractal theorist, Benoit Mandelbrot.

As one zooms in on the border of the shape, one finds that the same overall pattern repeats itself, over and over in infinitesimally smaller and smaller figures. These replicating patterns also produce some surprising results from their arrangement: the borders of the Mandelbrot Set, all produced by a simple equation, generate the dazzling and beautiful designs shown below (from Wikipedia’s fine gallery on the subject).

The wonder of fractals is that they are so simple and so easily defined, yet produce such incredible beauty and variety. And the more that scientists examine fractals, the more they find that fractal-structures provide much of the essential makeup of the natural world—leaves, trees, mountains, clouds, rivers, and so on. Fractal geometry adds to the growing body of scientific knowledge which points to the beauty and order of creation.

All of this is interesting in its own right, but I began to wonder. If fractals can give us a better understanding of certain areas of reality, such as the natural world, can they give us an understanding of other areas? In particular, can they be applied to the areas of my interest: history and theology? If the natural world at first seems chaotic, history seems even more so. However, we Christians hold that the same God who designed the natural world is also active in history, and especially active—even guiding—in the history of redemption. Could we not expect, then, to see certain patterns—perhaps even beautiful patterns—in that history?

The first immediate application that occurred to me was that of denominationalism. Most of those who think and write about the ever-fracturing denominations of Christianity treat it as an unfortunate state of affairs, a tragic violation of Jesus’ great prayer that we would all be one. That’s part of the picture, to be sure. Fractions in the unity of the church arise too often from un-Christian motives—the grudges, anger, and resentments that naturally boil up from the general irascibility of humans trying to live in community. And some arise from human mistakes on issues of theological debate. There’s a general feeling among Christians that one’s own denomination has the truth and all others are in error, at least to some degree. Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox each regard their own branch as the truest manifestation of the apostolic church, looking askance at Protestantism for its willful separation. Protestants, for their own part, though sometimes enjoying the variety of denominationalism (as in the American practice of church-hopping), often feel a certain amount of shame for their endlessly-splintering ways. All these views focus on the negative side of denominationalism, assuming it to be a result of human fallenness and error.

But that’s only one side of the story. The church is not only a human institution; it’s also a divine institution. We believe that the church itself, the community of Christians, is mystically enlivened and guided by the Holy Spirit. Might it not be the case that some of this ever-expanding denominationalism is the work of the Spirit? Those who would point back to earlier forms of Christianity as exemplifying an ideal unity are, to some extent, looking through rose-tinted glasses. The divergence of traditions has always been a part of Christianity, often driven by varying cultural environments. We can see the first example of divergence within the New Testament itself, in the different emphases of Jewish-culture Christian theology (illustrated most clearly in James) and Greek-culture theology. There was no formal separation, but these two streams of thought only intermingled to a degree. The later Christianity of Syria and Edessa continued to preserve much of the Jewish-culture Christianity, while other centers of Christianity moved largely along Greek lines. In the first few centuries, there was also a major divergence between the theologies of the ecclesiastical seats of authority, most notably between Antioch and Alexandria. After Constantine and the great ecumenical councils, permanent denominational divergence began in earnest. The fallout from the Council of Chalcedon was that the churches of Alexandria and Antioch (two of the original four major ecclesiastical seats) walked away from the formal unity of the wider church, and they’ve never completely come back.

During the Dark Ages, various “national” churches—such as the Irish—generated unique and inspiring manifestations of Christianity, significantly different in some ways from the mainstream traditions of the time. In the later Middle Ages, divergent traditions continued to arise all over Europe, although most of these, like the Waldensians, found themselves in the unfortunate situation of being under the authority of a Roman Church which had little tolerance for local theological variety. After the Protestant Reformation, this continuing divergence carried on and intensified, resulting in the multiplicity of denominations and traditions now to be seen all around the world.

The interesting thing is that most of these denominations arose from very specific geographic and historical circumstances, and so they each bear a unique cultural and theological imprint. Even among the denominations of “the Great Tradition” (Roman Catholicism and the various branches of Eastern Orthodoxy) there are significant differences in culture and theology. Now we have a spectrum of Christian traditions and communities, each with its own focus, and each with the potential to speak truth to its sister-traditions. We have the Eastern Orthodox church to direct our attention to our potential to be drawn into Christlikeness, the Lutheran church to remind us of the supremacy of grace, the Reformed churches to speak of the sovereignty of God, the Anabaptists to point us toward the pursuit of peace, the evangelical churches to remind us of the outreaching love of God to every man and woman, and the Pentecostals to direct our attention to the present power of the Holy Spirit (to name just a few of Christianity’s many branches).

Further, we can observe that different cultural circumstances give birth to a wide variety of practical expressions of Christianity. Early Jewish Christianity preserved a strong focus on the praxis of justice and righteousness; the ancient Persian church was profoundly missional in an age when the churches of the Mediterranean were not at all interested in missionary work; the medieval Irish churches were likewise missional and powerfully driven by an ideal of the imitation of Christ; the Moravian church of Zinzendorf, from its experience of persecution and wandering, had an emphasis both on the suffering of Christ and the global expansion of the faith; American churches have a tendency to emphasize the individual, practical application of the Gospel in its relational and internal-emotional dimensions; and I have seen with my own eyes the joyful community of contemporary African churches.

The point is that the divergence of cultural and theological traditions does not necessarily detract from Christianity as a whole. Rather, I think it tends to add to it. It allows each local culture to experience Christianity through the truth of Scripture and the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and then to express its faith in its own distinctive way. And from each distinctive expression of orthodox Christian faith, the wider Body of Christianity benefits. While our own cultural understanding of the faith is deeply impactful in our lives, the presence of other cultural expressions of the same faith opens our eyes to aspects of the Gospel that we might never have considered otherwise.

Rather than focusing purely on the negative aspects of denominationalism, I think we can benefit by thinking of Christian unity and denominationalism as a fractal, driven at least in part by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The church, like a fractal, is in a continual process of self-similar regeneration across cultures, infinitely generating the same pattern in endless repetition. At the heart of each of these repetitions is the exact same shape—the shape of the true Gospel, if you will, the faith in Jesus Christ that we all share—but as you zoom in and out of the picture, each of these repeated patterns produces beautiful and distinctive arrangements that we never could have predicted from the simplicity of the original shape itself. There is some pleasant comfort in perceiving the unity of the church as a smooth geometrical shape like a circle, but a fractal has a beauty that surpasses even the simplicity of the circle. It is a unity, but also a diversity—a wild and beautiful shape that preserves the truth of its original pattern while spinning a million tiny worlds of grace. And that, I think, is closer to the reality of the church—at once the same and different, and beautiful both in its unity and its diversity.

How Should We Do Missions? (Insights from the First Millennium of Christian History)

2008-12-14T20:47:00.001-08:00

(This post is my final paper for an independent study I did this semester. It focuses on how the missiology and missionary strategy of the early and medieval church can inform our present engagement of the Great Commission, and I think it ends up with some decent insights and ideas. If you'd like to see my full historical research paper on the subject, let me know and I'll send you a copy).

Introduction
When we begin to study the missionary enterprise of the early Church (from the 2nd century on), we are immediately confronted by the fact that it does not at all resemble missions as we know it. Though we know from the plain facts of history that Christianity grew rapidly in the Roman Empire over the first few centuries, we have little more than suppositions as to how it grew. There is seldom any reference to evangelistic preaching after the apostolic period, and only a very few recorded instances of person-to-person evangelistic witnessing. Rather, we find that the means of evangelism which received the greatest emphasis within the Roman Empire were martyrdoms, exorcisms, healings, and the like. While we should not discount the presence of individual witnessing and other, more passive forms of evangelism (like the display of charity and the attractive moral sense of Christianity), it is remarkable that the missionary methods highlighted by early Christian writers are far removed from the methods we now embrace.
When we pry a little deeper and attempt to reconstruct the early Christian perception of the missionary mandate—in other words, what motivated them to evangelistic or missionary activity—we find still more differences. Where our primary motivations would probably fall along the lines of concern for the eternal state of the unreached, as well as obedience to Scripture, these motivations are almost nowhere to be found until the rise of the early medieval missionaries (some five hundred years after Christ). Rather, their motivations seem to have sprung from theologies of spiritual warfare, competition between different Christian sects, and a rather different conception of what the ideal Christian life should look like than the one we now hold.
There are two extreme responses to this discrepancy between the early Church and our own idea of missions. The first is to accept wholeheartedly the early Church’s understandings and methods, simply because they were nearer to the fountainhead of our faith than we are, temporally speaking. The other extreme is to utterly disregard the work of the early Church and to assume that the Holy Spirit took an extended vacation until the Protestant Reformation. Of course, neither of these reactions is acceptable.
Against the first position, we would say that the “earliness” of the early Church is not in itself a convincing argument for the authority of their faith and practice. It may be the case that they retained certain themes and emphases of the apostles’ preaching that were not ultimately included in the canon of Scripture, and that is worthy of consideration as a possibility. However, we also believe that the Bible contains the complete message of God for his people, and thus we need not worry that we may have missed some pieces of the early apostolic faith. What the early Church does offer us, however, is the possibility that our interpretation of Scripture may have gotten off track at some point, and that their own perceptions of the meaning of certain passages may be closer to the truth than our own. Sometimes the presuppositions of our culture blind us to certain facets of Scripture, just as the culture of the Roman Empire did for the early Church—but their blindnesses will not be the same as ours, so we can expect that the records they left behind may help us to perceive the weak spots in our own understanding of the faith.
Against the second position, we would say that it is our belief that the Holy Spirit has never abandoned the Church, but rather, throughout her history, has protected, instructed, and guided her. To ignore the history of the early and medieval church is to turn our backs on a thousand years of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in the world. However, we also believe that the Church is a human institution, and therefore fallible on both the individual level and the communal level. Though the Holy Spirit is working in the Church, Christians don’t always get everything right as a result. So, as we would do with the varying expressions of Christian faith and practice in our own time, we must use a discerning eye towards the early and medieval churches, seeking to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is no easy task, since our assumptions often lead us to favor our own position where we disagree with our spiritual forefathers. But along the way, we may find something of value, something that we in our ignorance have overlooked or forgotten.
With that in mind, the applications of this paper take the form of tentative suggestions. I will point out several areas of faith and practice that the early Church employed in missions, but which we evangelicals do not. The suggestion here is that these methods are simply worth considering, and perhaps, in some cases, trying.

Applications in Theology
Much of our motivation for doing missionary work has its basis in our soteriology. We evangelicals traditionally hold that Jesus died to save us from our sins, so that we, as individuals, can be forgiven by God and welcomed into eternal life. Thus, our missionary endeavors focus on transmitting this message of personal salvation to others, who then can also be saved. The early Church would not have disagreed with this soteriological paradigm; however, they did not hold it to the exclusion of all other interpretations of the meaning of Christ’s work.
One of the dominant conceptions they had of soteriology was represented by the paradigm that has come to be known as Christus Victor. In short, Christus Victor theology considers the work of Christ not merely as an act of sacrificial atonement that leads to the forgiveness of sins, but as the triumph of God over the powers of sin, death, and the devil. Our problem, in our natural condition without Christ, is that we are captives. Everyone who sins cedes power to Satan and his dominion over the earth. There’s a broad stream of Scripture that speaks about Satan’s present dominion over the world, and about the Christian life as an external battle against the powers of evil. Paul seems to refer to Satan as “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4) and “the ruler of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2). Jesus calls Satan “the prince” of this present age (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11). The early Church Fathers also saw death as more than just a physical eventuality—it was an evil spiritual power, wielded by Satan, to which all human beings were subject as a result of sin. It included not merely physical death, but the loss of all spiritual life. To these three complementary spheres of evil power—Satan, sin, and death—all human beings were enslaved as a result of Adam’s first sin.
In this view, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus all have significance for our salvation (rather than just his death, which is what evangelical atonement theology usually highlights). Jesus prepared for his ministry by going into the desert and ended up having a faceoff with Satan, which Jesus won by refusing to sin. A large part of Jesus’ subsequent ministry consisted of the confrontation of demonic powers and of freeing people from their grasp. Finally, Jesus died on the Cross “so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb. 2:14-15). “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col. 2:15). 1 John 3:8 puts it plainly: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” And as the final stroke of his victory, Jesus rose from the dead. The power of death, which was in Satan’s hands, could not hold Jesus.
This was one of the dominant ways that the early Church understood the Gospel, and, as demonstrated above, it is a thoroughly biblical understanding. And just like our soteriology informs our sense of the missionary mandate, so their soteriology affected theirs. Since Christianity was a triumphal war against Satan and the powers of evil, the early Church employed spiritual warfare as the front-line tactics of its mission. Exorcisms, healings, and displays of supernatural power went side-by-side with the Gospel message (much as they did in the Gospels and Acts). Not only was the salvation of individuals a wonderful thing for the individuals themselves, it was a blow against the Enemy, whose kingdom of darkness was shrinking with every new convert that was transferred into the kingdom of “marvelous light.”
In the baptismal liturgy, when the convert is asked to “renounce Satan and all his works,” the early Church was not speaking of personal spirituality and individual sin. It was a declaration of war—a renunciation of the old king and an acceptance of the colors of the Militia Christi. In the eastern Christianity of Mesopotamia, vast throngs of people consecrated themselves as “Sons and Daughters of the Covenant,” pledged to do spiritual battle through preaching, healing, charity, and prayer. And when the desert fathers in Egypt withdrew to the wilderness to give themselves to a life of prayer, it wasn’t simply for the sake of eccentricity or austere personal devotion—it was to confront the demons head-on (in the culture of the day, demonic spirits were thought to reside especially in the deserts). The mission of the church was not so much concerned with “reaching the unreached people,” but of making Christ’s triumph over Satan an experienced reality in the world around them.
However, just as our soteriology and missiology may be weakened by our ignorance of the Christus Victor tradition, so the early Church’s conception of mission was unbalanced by a lack of connection between it and the clearly loving, personal, outreaching dimension of God’s salvation. The militant nature of early missional activity took a violent turn when it finally gained the power to pursue its aims, with the succession of Constantine to the Imperial throne in the 4th century. With the Empire’s strength now behind them, the early Church attacked pagan temples and shrines, razing them to the ground and sometimes torturing and killing the priests. They carried out bloody pogroms against other sects within Christianity, determined to stamp out heresy with force. More Christians died at one another’s hands in the fourth century than had perished in all the previous persecutions under the Romans. This Christian use of force against the enemies of faith was sporadic and not well-organized, but even so it should give us pause. An incomplete and unbalanced theology can be a dangerous thing. However, I don’t think that we face the same danger in accepting some elements of Christus Victor theology, since our understanding is already heavily weighted toward the loving, people-oriented aspects of the Gospel.
So what can the early Church suggest for our present theology of missions? It would be unwise to abandon the clearly biblical passion for the salvation of individuals, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t buttress that theology with the addition of a Christus Victor perspective. Consider, for instance, one of the drawbacks of holding a missiology that focuses exclusively on the salvation of souls: if a missionary enterprise does not ultimately gain any converts, it is regarded as a failure. When I was serving in North Africa, I heard numerous stories about difficult mission-fields across the Muslim world, where missionaries would spend ten or fifteen or twenty years before making a single convert. The implication was that this was a tragic state of affairs. In some sense it is, but to leave the matter there would be to abandon these missionaries to a sense of failure, and there would be little motivation for future missionaries to consider such places for their own work.
If we add a Christus Victor element, however, the picture changes. In this light, missionary work in the most difficult places is the most important, most daring, and possibly the most fruitful work of all, since it stands on the front lines of the great spiritual war. Missionaries in those places are claiming the first beachhead in hostile territory, and simply by being there and taking their attack to very doorstep of the demons’ strongholds, they weaken the power of Satan’s kingdom. Who knows what fruit in personal salvation might grow there fifty or a hundred years from now, because of those first brave missionaries who began the invasion? In Christus Victor theology, no missionary endeavor carried out in the spirit of Christ can be a complete failure, simply because every such effort, regardless of the visible results, is a blow against Satan’s kingdom. Obedience to the call of Christ is never in vain. Any effort that says “yes” to God’s mission in the world is inherently valuable, regardless of the results. Christus Victor theology reminds us that it is Christ who is the warrior, and Christ who is the victor—not us. Our part is to obey; his part is to bring forth whatever fruit may grow in those barren fields.
What practical changes might this Christus Victor addition include? Some of the practices of the early Church, such as temple-smashing raids, are obviously inadvisable except in very extreme circumstances. But other practices, such as exorcisms and healings, might well be added to our regular missionary practice. Both practices were clearly evident in the ministry of Jesus and the apostles, so there is no reason why only “Charismatic” groups should have a corner on that market now. Obviously, we would have to guard against sensationalism and all the other dangers that come with displays of spiritual power, but the dangers themselves are not a strong enough argument to prevent us from employing what proved to be some of the most effective means of ministry-work for the first five hundred years of Christianity. When approached with significant training and discernment, these active means of spiritual warfare directly lay claim to the freedom that Christ won for us, and thus they make a powerful soteriological statement in and of themselves.
Further, it might be advisable to allow the rhetoric of spiritual warfare to return to our preaching and teaching. Speaking of Satan and demons has fallen out of vogue in the West, but if our Enemy truly is still prowling about, “seeking whom he may devour,” then we cannot afford to ignore him. Christians should be trained to think of themselves, at least in part, as soldiers in the great, triumphal war of God.

Applications in Personal Devotion
Much of the early and medieval Church also operated on a very different conception of what “the ideal Christian life” should look like. While we American Christians might point to a life characterized by daily quiet times, personal witnessing, and a healthy family life, some traditions in the early Church pointed to something that looked quite a bit like the pattern of ministry Jesus laid out for his seventy-two disciples in Luke 10. This was especially true in the eastern Christianity of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia from the 2nd through the 7th centuries, and in Irish and Anglo-Saxon Christianity from the 6th through the 9th centuries. Their ideal was of the wandering pilgrim, wholly consecrated to Christ in every facet of his life. This was “the imitation of Christ” considered not merely as a path of spiritual devotion, but as a whole way of living. These imitators of Christ—usually monks of some sort—were considered set apart from the world, and they patterned their lives after Christ’s own: walking from village to village, preaching the Gospel, praying, voluntarily accepting the poverty of not having a home, doing acts of charity, and so on.
We Protestants shy away from that sort of model, mainly because we take some of the correctives of the Reformation too far. The Reformation sought to set right the erroneous medieval-Catholic belief in two different levels of Christianity, one for the laypeople (who really only had to attend Mass and otherwise try to be good), and another for those pursuing “the way of perfection”—a life of total consecration to God, usually as a monk or priest. Luther and the other Reformers rebelled against this, saying that the Bible taught that all believers were equal in God’s sight and all were called to uphold the moral and spiritual imperatives of the New Testament. The Reformers were right in this, but their heavy emphasis on the matter led to an unfortunate consequence: there is now virtually no one who dares to live the life of a monk or a pilgrim-preacher in Protestant Christianity, because that model is regarded with such scorn. But it is one thing to say that all Christians are equal; it is quite another to say that no one should live such a life of radical personal consecration to God, and I fear we have fallen into the error of the latter.
It was just such pilgrim-preachers who carried the Gospel all the way into Persia, and then to China and the steppes of central Asia in the first millennium, and it was just such pilgrim-preachers who set out from Britain to convert the barbarian tribes of Germany to the faith. These men, in large part, were the missionary force for the first thousand years of Christianity. Since it is a biblical model, why not present this kind of life as a spiritual ideal worthy of embrace? Most evangelical Christians in America, having grown up in the luxury of comfortable middle-class homes, will never even consider such a radical lifestyle as a genuine and honorable possibility unless it is presented to them as such. We have no models for this kind of ministry any more, which is unfortunate. But this model is not bound by culture. In any culture in the world, men and women who voluntarily choose to live with the poor and homeless, who travel about doing good deeds and spreading the hope of the Gospel, will be effective in the work of Christian missions. The old practice of spiritual pilgrimage to holy sites is undergoing a modest reawakening in some evangelical circles, so why not present the even older practice of the imitatio Christi pilgrimage as a possible ideal for the Christian life?
This idea of the imitation of Christ as a way of life does not merely encompass life, though—it also informs our perspective on death. Throughout the history of the early and medieval Church, martyrdom—dying for the sake of Christ and his work—was a laudable thing. Many early missionaries went out with the almost certain knowledge that they would be killed for their work. And yet they went. Some, like Anskar, even desired the glory of martyrdom. Why was martyrdom such a great glory? Because it was the fullest possible extent of the imitation of Christ. It was an act of sharing in Christ’s sufferings and death, and thus visibly presenting the message of a willingly-executed Savior to the world. It was a living drama of the message of a love so great that even death for the sake of that love is a welcome and wonderful thing.
Contrast this attitude with our present views on martyrdom. We work to serve the persecuted church, and well we should—they are our brothers and sisters. But we work out of a sense that persecution and martyrdom are tragedies, when all that Scripture asks us to do is offer comfort to the hurting. When Western missionaries die on the field, we regard it as a terrible tragedy. In some sense it is, especially for the family and friends left behind. But death is simply a part of life, and there is no better place to die than in the service of God. A life cut short in his service is better than a long life of comfortable apathy. In my opinion, being martyred in the work of the Kingdom of God is a far better way to perish than in spending the last twenty years of my life watching television and playing golf in a retirement resort. The plain fact of the matter is that unless we begin to change the perception of American Christians that martyrdom is a tragedy, then American Christians will never answer to call to be missionaries to the places that need the Gospel the most. Rather, it will fall to those believers who know both the cost and the glory of suffering and martyrdom—those in persecuting countries like China—who will have the honor of finishing the task.

Applications for the Life of the Church
Another application arises largely out of the unconscious circumstances of early Christianity—that of being clearly and obviously a distinct people, set apart from the world. In their earliest days they were an odd and therefore easily recognizable sect, and this played somewhat to their advantage. There was a sense of mystery about the church because it was so very different from the rest of the world. It is worth asking whether that same sense of wonderful mystery surrounds the church in America. Are we so different from the way the world lives that outsiders sit up and take notice? We need to find ways to live out the Christian message anew, because the message itself is so radically different from the ways of the world that it will, by itself, draw those who are looking for something beyond their normal experience.
A similar application comes from the story of the conversion of the Rus to Christianity in the late 10th century. Vladimir, the reigning prince of Kiev, considered all the various religious options around him (Islam, Judaism, Carolingian Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy), and he chose Eastern Orthodox Christianity because it was so beautiful. We would do well to consider how to make Christianity beautiful again—beautiful in art, architecture, literature, music, and liturgy, but most of all, beautiful in the presentation of its message and in its manner of living.
The early medieval Church also gives us an intriguing institutional paradigm to consider: missional monasticism. Protestants have always shied away from monasticism, largely for the reasons already described above. There is a common stereotype, not wholly undeserved, that the secluded lifestyle of monks ignores the Christian mandate of outreach, of being “in the world but not of it.” However, the early Irish monasticism of Columba and Columbanus gives us a different picture. Rather than being a community of seclusion, these monasteries were communities of outreach. The brothers lived together in poverty and under mutual spiritual vows, but they also went out into the surrounding areas, teaching and preaching to the local residents. Eventually a new monastery would be planted on the frontiers of an unreached territory, and the monks would go about preaching and teaching there as well, until a new set of missionary-monks were trained and ready to go even further into the barbarian hinterland.
Monasticism is a peculiar enough institution that it will not be missionally effective in every cultural context, but it might be worth considering whether it could be effective in the evangelical church in America. If a group of Christians—either singles or families—elected to live together in a common community, holding resources in common and strengthening one another’s spiritual lives by their constant contact, all while going out into their jobs in the world and intentionally spreading the Gospel there, what would the effects be? It could indeed be a way to spark that sense of mystery which the church in our day seems to have lost. And it should be noted that this is not merely a historical model; it’s also a biblical model—it is very similar to the Jerusalem church as portrayed in Acts. Already there are a few such evangelical communities growing in the movement called “the new monasticism,” and it will be interesting to see how they fare over the course of time.

Applications for Missionary Methods
Some of the missionary methods we glean from the early Church we learn from their successes; others from their mistakes. To take the latter category first, one missionary method that is now almost universally accepted, but which was slow to catch on in the early Church, was the use of the native vernacular in developing liturgy. The Persian church probably collapsed in large part because it never adopted the native language of Persia, but stubbornly kept to Syriac as its liturgical language. If Persian missionaries, who were extremely active for hundreds of years, had adopted the use of vernaculars rather than Syriac, Christianity probably would have penetrated deeper into Arabia and, quite possibly, this would have prevented the rise of Islam. Similarly, a use of the vernacular in the North African provinces might have allowed the ancient church in that region to survive the Muslim conquests of the 7th century. Only a very few missionaries in the early and medieval Church made use of vernaculars, and their efforts proved massively successful: Ulfila translated the Bible into Gothic, and within the span of a few decades the majority of German Goths were Arian Christians. Cyril and Methodius likewise translated the liturgy into Old Slavonic, which opened the gates for the conversion of much of Eastern Europe. The message is simple: whenever possible, use the language of the people to whom you minister.
Another instance of failure on the part of the early church is in this principle: acceptance of Christianity should not go hand-in-hand with the imposition of Imperial rule or culture. Much of Persia long remained Zoroastrian because to be a Christian was perceived as being a Roman. The German Goths who invaded the Roman Empire quite probably clung to Arian Christianity rather than the orthodox form because it gave them the freedom to be different, and so to preserve their own culture. Likewise, much later on, the Scandinavians were extremely slow in accepting the faith because they believed that to do so implied that they would have to accept subjugation to the Carolingian Empire and to the papal office. While most missionaries nowadays accept that native peoples should be able to retain their own culture and autonomy when receiving the Gospel, it is still worth asking the question: Do people around the world perceive the act of becoming Christian as an act of bowing to America (or at least, to the West)? And if so, what can be done to change that perception?
One possible answer, though certainly not the only answer, is to partner with native missionaries in the work of cross-cultural missions. Ulfila, the great apostle to the Goths, was himself a Goth by birth. Frumentius, who brought the Gospel to Ethiopia, had lived there for a number of years beforehand; as had Patrick with the Irish. The Anglo-Saxon missionaries who went out from Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries probably met with such success because they were of a related race and language to the Germans who received their message. People will more readily accept one of their own than an outsider; it’s a simple rule of human society. That doesn’t mean that cross-cultural missionaries are obsolete, but rather that a native missionary can be a great asset and ally.
Another application comes from one of the great successes of the early missions to Britain: where possible, target your work toward the leaders of society. Both the Roman and Irish missionaries to England went primarily to the various kings of the land, and with great success. In that culture, when the king accepted a new faith, his whole coterie of war-leaders would accept it, too, along with many of the common people. Thus, the conversion of the king often led to mass conversions of thousands upon thousands of people. Mass conversions are now looked upon suspiciously, and in Anglo-Saxon England they certainly did not signal a permanent change of life in the individuals who were baptized. However, many cultures think in more communal terms than we individualist Americans do, and for them, religion is a matter of community life, not merely of personal decision. Thus, mass conversions can be quite appropriate. And, generally speaking, the second or third generation after a mass conversion is usually thoroughly Christianized (this was the case with the Saxons, who were forced into mass baptism at the point of Charlemagne’s sword, but who soon became the leading lights of Christian Europe). Even if there are no mass conversions, however, the leaders in society usually engender great respect from their people, and the community as a whole will entertain the notion of a new faith more seriously if their leader converts.
Another application, which perhaps should be used sparingly, is to speak about the reality of final Judgment in our preaching and teaching. This was the model of the evangelistic-preaching of the early Church, wherever the sparse records of it remain. We, however, have inherited a fierce distaste toward the guilt-provoking, fire-and-brimstone sermons of our forefathers, and for good reason. But the fact of final Judgment remains prominent in our doctrine. If it is true, and if it is useful in the work of missions, why not use it? There is a difference between making people feel guilty merely for the sake of feeling guilty (which we should probably avoid), and of warning them about something that they need to know. It need not be done in a browbeating fashion. One could easily get the message across in a manner of gentleness and genuine concern. It will cause some offense, to be sure, but the Gospel is naturally offensive to many people.
And finally, we can learn from the message that the Venerable Bede tried to convey to his audience: take the Gospel to your enemies. In reflecting on the history of England, he chastised the Welsh Christians for not sending missionaries to the invading pagan tribes of Angles and Saxons. A few of Bede’s successors heard his message, and men like Willibrord and Boniface gave up their lives to go to the hostile Frisians. But on the whole, the message does not appear to have sunk in. Other than Anskar, we have virtually no record of missionaries going from Britain or central Europe to convert the Vikings. It is a difficult thing to minister to one’s enemies, but it is, I think, the highest expression of what Jesus commanded us to do: love our enemies. We in the American church ought to consider the degree to which we are praying for the salvation of radical Muslim fundamentalists and the degree to which we are traveling to the Middle East to live with them and share the message of Christ’s hope.

Applications for Culture
The final set of applications that I believe we can take from the history of the early and medieval church is on the matter of how to build a missionary culture. There were two great instances of “missionary cultures” during this period—the Edessan/Persian church, and the Irish/Anglo-Saxon church. For Christian clerics in those cultures, missionary service was regarded as one of the highest ideals, one of the greatest honors of the life of faith. They sent out missionaries in all directions at a rate unsurpassed until the Jesuits and the Moravians of the post-Reformation world (with the possible exception of the Franciscans).
How were they able to motivate their people so readily for missionary service? There seem to have been two main reasons: (1) the heroes of whom they were told while growing up were all missionaries, and (2) the finest churchmen and scholars of the day were involved in missionary service. The legacy of Patrick and Columbanus, along with a host of other 7th-century missionary-wanderers, fueled the Anglo-Saxon missions-wave that was spearheaded by Willibrord and Boniface. Their heroes were all missionaries, and so they too aspired to be missionaries. In the same way that ministry students in contemporary America might aspire to become like Billy Graham or Rick Warren or Rob Bell, they aspired to become like Patrick. Bede himself continued this legacy, because his missions-minded Ecclesiastical History of the English People became common reading in England and France and served to spark the Carolingian missions movement. So what application can be drawn for us? Simply this: in teaching and preaching, we can tell our people the stories of the great missionaries of the past—from Patrick and Boniface to J. Hudson Taylor and Samuel Zwemer. Unless they hear the stories, they will never even begin to dream of the possibilities of a world awakened by the mission of the Church.
The second reason for these missionary cultures was that the finest minds of the day were involved in missions. Egbert, Willibrord, and Boniface represented the cream of the crop of Anglo-Saxon clerics, and rather than spend their lives gaining large followings in England, they decided to spend themselves on the mission field. Similarly, Cyril and Methodius were among the leading lights of the Byzantine Empire when they agreed to go out in missionary service to the Khazars, Moravians, and Slavs. Cyril was perhaps one of the greatest intellects in history, and Methodius was a brilliant administrator with connections to the Imperial court; yet they decided to leave all that in order to present the Gospel to those who had not yet heard. To apply this to our own culture is something that we cannot compel: it is something that the best and brightest must themselves choose to do. But if the leaders of our church and culture do make the public and visible sacrifice of serving in cross-cultural missions for the sake of the Kingdom, it would undoubtedly have far-reaching effects in raising up admirers to join the cause.

Conclusion
In all these things, then, we can learn from the early Church. They speak to us from a different time and culture, and so they open up for us ideas that we may have never thought of before. Their ideas, if implemented here in America, would seem radical in nature, but Christianity is a faith that thrives on radical measures. Not all of these suggestions will work; probably not all of them are even advisable in the long run. But at the very least, they are worthy of consideration. We are heirs of the mission that these ancient saints began, and there is great potential that in our day we may see, at least in part, the fulfillment of the promise made 4,000 years ago to Abraham: all nations will be blessed. With that goal in mind, and the great mandate of our Lord himself, we ought to examine and employ every useful measure in the task of carrying out the Great Commission.

Questing to a Better Shore

2008-11-19T17:01:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I happily chanced across a copy of Pseudo-Macarius' Fifty Spiritual Homilies on a bargain bookshelf. I had never heard of the author, but, having a strong affection for the spiritual writings of the early church, I bought it. In the past week I've sat down and begun reading it, to find it one of the most beautiful and praise-inspiring collections of early Christian spirituality I've ever encountered. It turns out that Pseudo-Macarius, of whom we know almost nothing other than that he was probably a monk in 4th-century Syria (we don't even know his real name), was one of the early fountainheads of Eastern Orthodox spirituality, and he also had a major impact on the Protestant Pietists (forerunners of us evangelicals).

My spirit has been dry of poetry for several months now, but Pseudo-Macarius brought it back. In the words of John Wesley (from his journal): "I read Macarius and sang." This is a poem I wrote today, inspired by his writings. It speaks of the fight of the human will against the power of sin, which has infested our nature, and of God's help in bringing us back to our original nature, and then beyond it through the gift of the Spirit.

(Those of you interested in the mechanics of poetry will probably note that although this poem aspires to a set meter, and sometimes even a rhyme, it isn't all the way there. That's somewhat intentional--the form of the poem itself is meant to portray the constant aspiration toward the perfection of virtue, but, because of the limitations of sin and human nature, not its full accomplishment.)

Christ, alive this day in me,
In us--
Awaken Thou my soul to love.

I, caught against the flow of sin
That casts me up on twisted nature's shore--
I take my barque and paddle hard
Against the draw of pull and tide;
And as I strike the angry wave
With portioned blow and calm,
The wind of Thy sweet breath makes rise
To aid me to a better shore.

There peace and valor both alight
And greet the wild wind with praise--
There I, true-hearted and alive,
Find my soul in Eden's ways.

This is my nature as it was--
Unspoiled, bright with joy.
Again, again, You call me back,
Back to what we were before.
Pure and undefiled we,
And now with Spirit's raptured grace,
Our hearts are mirrors of Thy love,
Our hearts are mirrors of Thy face.

Thou to us are God
In person and in truth;
And we to the world are as You:
God in virtue and in love.

This voyage is my endless quest,
This fight against dark nature's tide.
Questing I come forth to fight,
And questing I lay down to die.

Make Thou my journey full and fierce,
And recklessly sublime,
Till I find myself at nature's end
When love shall triumph over time.

Can Politics Save the World?

2008-11-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

The answer, of course, is "No." But in a presidential election where hype is at an all-time high, driven by mantras of "hope" and "change we can believe in," it's worth re-stating the simple truth: politics can achieve a great deal of good, but politics has never been the answer to the world's problems, and it never will be.

I've outlined my position on voting in presidential elections in the posts below, and I have great hopes for the good that politics can achieve in the future of our country. But if our hope is only in politics, our hope is severely misplaced. Biblically speaking, the Christian hope for the world only marginally intersects with the regular course of political affairs. There is some overlap, but certainly not a total overlap. For instance, the church is called to seek justice, as is the state. But the church seeks justice not for itself, but for others, and it seeks it by way of love, while the state seeks justice by means of the sword, and first and foremost for its own citizens. And there are significant areas where the agendas of church and state do not point in the same direction. For example, capitalist nation-states see it as their duty to support an economy that flourishes in prosperity for its citizens, while the church flourishes by giving its prosperity away for the good of others. The state exists, in large part, for the safety and security of its people, while the church mobilizes its people into the unsafe, insecure areas of life where the mission of God is being carried out.

In short, then, the church and state have different aims, and even in those aims they do share, their methods are significantly different. But it's not enough to note that the two institutions are merely different. We need to press further and ask, "Which institution has more potential to change the world for good?" Certainly politics can (but historically, its track record hasn't been great on that mark), but the church is where the power for transforming society truly rests. Why? Simply because the transformation of society begins with people's hearts, and that is beyond the reach of politics.

The God-given mandate of politics--the power of the sword to do good--is usually defined in terms of ensuring peace and justice. And those ends, of course, are indispensable. There are some things that the state can do which the church can't, and as good citizens of a democratic state, we ought to uphold those purposes. However, my first exhortation for my fellow Christians is simply this: We ought not to cede too much of our mission to the state. We can't allow political action on issues that are also responsibilities of the church to give us an excuse for our complacency. To put it simply: the mere fact that the government in our society takes upon itself the task of looking after the poor and the elderly is not a good reason for the church to ignore its own mandate to care for the weakest members of society.

Politics can't save the world, but Jesus can and will. And the body of Christ--his living presence in this world--is the church. The church has more power--immeasurably more--to effect lasting change for good in the world than politics ever will.

Take the abortion issue. Though the political means of fighting abortion are valuable--and hopefully will prove effective--lasting change on this issue, in a democratic society like ours, will only come through a basic change in people's hearts. A self-centered, sex-crazed culture will never consent to do away with abortion. Even if anti-abortion legislation is effectively passed, it will always be in danger of being reversed as long as the majority of the culture is ambivalent about the morality of this issue. Only a culture being inwardly renewed through a revival of Christian faith and morality will be able to stand up and affirm lasting change. Politics can change laws, but not hearts; and it is hearts that need changing before some of the issues that face us, like abortion, can ever be fully addressed. (Note, however, that this is not an argument against anti-abortion legislation, since I argued strongly in my earlier posts for using politics to fight abortion. This is merely an observation that the root of the problem goes deeper than bad laws--it goes back to the hearts of the citizens who make the laws).

Perhaps it's good to consider not so much what Obama or McCain can do for the causes of peace, education, poverty, and social justice, but rather to consider what we, the church, can do. It is our responsibility to look after the poor, the widows, and the orphans. We cannot allow ourselves to slide into complacency on these issues with the excuse that it's the government's problem now. If we really want to effect lasting change toward a life-affirming culture, we need to model that life by caring for the poor, comforting the sick, and adopting parentless children. If we really want to move our nation toward peacemaking rather than violent international policing, then we need to model the sort of honest, loving, confrontational peacemaking that Jesus displayed. If we honestly want to see lasting change in this country, we ought to be spending a great deal more time on our knees.

Politics can't save the world. But God can, and God works through the church. Let's remember, when election day rolls around, that putting too much of our hope in politics can lead us into an idolatrous cult of misplaced hope. Politics can do great good, but our hope truly rests only in one place:

"Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God." (Ps. 20:7)

Then What About the Other Issues?

2008-10-27T19:23:00.000-07:00

If you've read my previous blog post, whether you agreed with me or not, this question probably came up in your mind: Even if casting our votes first and foremost as votes against abortion is a reasonable, moral option, doesn't that mean we're necessarily ignoring other issues? What about the environment? What about the cause of peace? What about poverty? These are all issues which should also be front-and-center in the Christian mission to proclaim and enact the Kingdom of God.

Quite right. Here are my thoughts on the matter, in brief. First, a single vote cast in a national election of hundreds of millions of people, in which candidates run on multiple issues, is not the most effective means of supporting such isolated issues demanding our attention. Voting is an honor not to be taken lightly, but a single vote, in point of fact, does not bear great impact in such a numerically broad election. Only if you're fortunate enough to live in one of the few significant "swing states" is there the possibility that your individual vote might be a significant force for change.

It should also be said that the differences between the two parties on some of these issues are not nearly so great as we might imagine. Both sides would immediately affirm the necessity to protect the environment, seek lasting peace as our ultimate goal, and work for the eradication of poverty. They may have different ways of going about it, but the intentions are much the same. No one runs on an anti-environment, anti-peace, pro-poverty platform.

If we expect politics to save the world through the means of our vote, then our expectation is severely misplaced. Even on the abortion issue, a single vote is not all that effective--it is as much a stand of conscience as anything else.

So what do we do? I would encourage us to engage the problems at the most effective point of entry: not a national vote, but on the local level. This is true for the abortion problem, too--the most effective means of pursuing change is by being a voice in the public square, to cast a vision for the hope and joy of a life-affirming culture, as well as by supporting pro-life charities and by adopting children. Likewise, the most effective means of combatting poverty is to vote towards that issue on the local level, where politics has its most immediate application. Donate to local charities. Volunteer at soup kitchens. A vote cast for a national candidate for the sake of combating poverty holds little moral value if the voter is content to rest secure in a posh suburban home and not get his hands dirty in the real work of social justice. For the environment, support charities and non-profits that do environmental preservation. Make consciously "green" choices in your own lifestyle. Write to your congressional representatives--they always keep one ear to public opinion, and they will not ignore the environment if we all voice our concern about it.

These are the measures I would advocate. A vote cast against abortion is a moral stance--and hopefully, one that will bear fruit in time. And that moral stance is not unimportant, as I argued in my previous post. But to use our vote in a stand against abortion does not mean we must abdicate our moral responsibility on the other issues. Even with our vote already cast, we can still engage those problems in the most effective ways possible. As limited people, we certainly can't be active in all these ways all the time; we need to use discretion. But if we're serious about the change we want to see, then our activism must of necessity be more than a simple vote. Otherwise, it's not much of a step up from simple hypocrisy. We need to dive in and show the world that we're committed to being instruments of redemption. And by our words and our actions, we will eventually shape a culture where these great moral interests need not be separated into polarized positions. The Christian life is a life that encompasses all these concerns, and it is our joy, our privilege, and our obligation to engage them with wisdom, patience, and love for our neighbors.

Why I Am a One-Issue Voter

2008-10-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

With the November elections rapidly approaching, it feels like a good time to do a short piece on politics. Evangelicals have often been chastised for being one- or two-issue voters (namely, on the issues of abortion and homosexuality). And even within the evangelical community, there's a rapidly growing feeling, especially among my own generation, that the way we vote ought to encompass a broader spectrum of issues. I affirm that trend, but at the same time, I want to present an argument for one-issue voting as Christians. Let me be clear at the outset: this is not an argument that one-issue voting is the only reasonable, moral choice for Christians. Rather, it is an argument against the critics who spurn one-issue voting as uninformed and morally shortsighted.

It's true that Christians have a vested interest in a great number of issues that carry moral significance. The Bible makes it clear that we ought to be good stewards of creation (which gives us something to say on environmental questions), and that we ought to fight for justice and for the defense of the poor (a moral issue engaged in economics and other areas). Further, the NT gives Christians a prophetic voice to speak out for the cause of peace rather than violence.

But the difficult truth of the matter is that American politics is currently in a two-party system, for all practical purposes. The range of Christian moral obligation on this broad variety of issues is not summed up in the position of either major party. The Democrats often have an appealing stance on social justice and environmental issues, while the Republicans offer their support towards fighting abortion and preserving traditional Christian cultural values. As such, I truly believe that any Christian can sincerely vote according to the issues for either candidate and do so in a way that honors God's heart toward the issues facing America.

However, my own personal conviction is that the balance of stakes lies heavily toward the issue of abortion. I am a one-issue voter, not because I feel that the other issues are unimportant or ought not to be engaged. Quite the contrary. But I do feel that the stakes are so enormously high in the abortion debate that I cannot conscientiously ignore it in order to give prominence to other issues. The Christian view, as it has been since the beginning of church history, is that unborn children are people in their own right. They are creations of God, made in his image and knit together to be reflections of his glory. As such, any abortion is a willful murder of an innocent human life (innocent in the sense that their execution is undeserved by any standard of human law). Obviously, this opening premise would not be shared by many who come from a non-Christian worldview, but that's another argument entirely. Within the biblical-Christian frame of thought, there really are no significant gray areas on this mark: abortion is murder. And when we consider the scale at which abortions take place in our country, the numbers are horrifying. Millions of children are being actively murdered in our society. In my view, that one fact is enough to outweigh all the other issues combined.

Let me use an extreme example: one that no doubt would be viewed as an unfair analogy by the pro-choice camp, but given the biblical-Christian presuppositions, I think it's valid. Imagine that you're a citizen in Nazi Germany at the height of the Holocaust, and that you're fully aware of the ongoing extermination of the Jews. And now imagine, hypothetically, that Hitler was up for re-election against a candidate who was pledging to do what he could to bring an end to the Holocaust. It wouldn't matter to me whether that candidate's economic policies were horrible or his environmental platform inept; I would vote for him on one issue alone.

No analogy is perfect, but I think that one gives us a taste of how high the stakes are. Now the Republican camp might not have the end of abortion as Agenda Item #1, but we have a much better chance of stopping abortion with them in office than with the Democrats at the helm. One of the truly chilling facts of the current presidential campaign is that Barack Obama would be perhaps the worst candidate in American history on the abortion issue. He has voted in the past in such a way that the surviving child of a botched abortion would be denied life--viable babies, outside the womb, would still be killed--a measure on which even the vast majority of Democrats decided to go the other way. And if Obama is in the White House, with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, there will be little to prevent them from pushing through all manner of bills to broaden the pro-abortion agenda.

So in short, my vote has always been--and for the forseeable future, will continue to be--a vote against abortion, over and above anything else. The reasons are purely logical: Unborn children are human beings in their own right (a claim which can be amply defended not only from theology and the Bible, but also from science), and therefore their willful destruction is nothing less than murder. It may be murder driven by agents who suffer from sincere error, but it is murder nonetheless. As such, I cannot in good conscience give my vote to a candidate who supports abortion, any more than I can give my vote to a candidate who openly supports cannibalism or rape. Let me say again, this is not the only reasonable, moral position for Christians with regard to voting. Mine is an argument from proportion more than anything else, so it does not exclude other valid moral concerns. (However, I do think that my stance on one-issue voting is the most reasonable option; otherwise I wouldn't hold it, and I would encourage all sincere believers to at least consider it.)

There may come a day when other circumstances or complicating factors make a different moral issue take precedence, but for now, at least in my view, no other issue comes close to matching the urgency of the abortion issue. In that light, I am quite simply a one-issue voter, and I would maintain that it is not only an eminently reasonable position, but a position that has the force of the Christian moral imperative fully behind it.

A Relationship with God

2008-09-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

In popular evangelical circles, there's a saying that goes something like this: "Christianity isn't a religion; it's a relationship."

I understand the sentiment here. There's more to Christianity than rites and readings. It's a genuine, personal connection with a very real, very personal God. But if we leave it at merely the level of "Christianity is a relationship," then we run the risk of hindering our own spiritual growth and the growth of those around us. The truth is, Christianity is a relationship, but it's like no other relationship you've ever had. The interactions that constitute this personal relationship with God are so unlike any human relationship that the terminology of "relationship" can lead us to some false assumptions.

For instance, many people assume that they should always have an awareness of the presence of God with them. As with any dear friend, they yearn for closeness, for an emotional attachment that will bring them consolation in their empty moments. They want a safe refuge to run to, a place to feel accepted and secure.

But that's not always the way it is with God. Because pride and self-centeredness has its roots all the way down into the depths of our hearts, sometimes we want to be close to God for our own sake. We seek him out not for the sake of his glory, but for our own consolation. But to enjoy someone's presence only for the way they make you feel is the most basic of relationships--that of a young child with its parents. And God is a Father to us, but he is so much more. He has called us to be his friends. And he beckons us toward maturity, toward a relationship that seeks and shares and rejoices together. A real relationship involves significant give-and-take, and our relationship with God is more "real" than any other.

Sometimes the only way we can actually learn to know God more intimately--to seek him out for his own sake and to appreciate him for who he is--is by the removal of the consolations of his presence from us. Sometimes, God is very hard to find. He can feel a universe away from us, and there is no sign that he either hears or cares about our prayers and devotions. To someone who has only ever been told that "Christianity is a relationship," this can be a bewildering time. How do you have a relationship with someone who simply isn't there? But the truth is, that's often how the Christian life feels. Very few believers enjoy the constant consolations of God's presence. More often there are the quiet emptinesses, the desolations of yearning. More often than not, our prayers seem like a one-way conversation. We try to listen, but all we hear is silence. For those believers who have been taught that prayer ought to be a genuine dialogue between them and God, there is no explanation for these long treks through the desert of God's silence.

So what do we do? I don't think we need to throw away the language of relationship, because our union with God certainly is that. But we need to teach people how to understand that relationship. It involves more than a sense of God's presence and the joyful expectation of interior peace. Sometimes it involves just the opposite--the desolations of God's silence. But tradition tells us that the latter experiences are more fruitful than the former. Those desolations and silences are the experiences that grow us toward maturity. We begin to understand that God is more than our intimate counselor, ready to soothe us at a moment's notice. He is king and friend, father and warrior, shepherd and judge. He is all this and infinitely more. He is the Endless All before which creation trembles. And he does not submit to our expectations. Rather, he weans us away from ourselves, making us able to see who he is in himself. It is a vision that we can't handle as beginners; we have no capacity to drink in the full wonder of the Godhead. But through the long, painful road of dying to self, which includes these droughts of God's emotional consolation, we are made, in the end, able to understand and experience (at least in part) the breathless, ineffable Person of God. This relationship is a journey, and because it is a relationship with God, it is like no other relationship. God is always near, and he does not abandon us, but he wants to lead us on the long road of knowing him. Only on that road does our relationship mature. Only on that road do we find open the possibility of resting in the presence of God like Moses did in the Tent of Meeting, as one friend with another.

And when we use the language of relationship, we should use it with caution, not only because it's an utterly unique relationship, but also because that idea, taken as the pattern of Christian life, is only sparsely found in the New Testament. That's not to say it isn't present. Certainly the NT speaks of us being "reconciled to God," and Jesus gives a long and intimate speech to his friends before his death. Because of the Spirit living in us, we can cry "Abba!" to God. But when the NT writers come down to talking about the true nature of Christianity in its practical form, they seldom use the idea of a personal relationship with God. Part of the reason, I suspect, is because they didn't conceive of the Christian life as a purely individual affair. Christianity, for them, was not the experience of "me and God." It was the experience of "God and us." We are all united together to the true vine. As a community of saints, we are together called and chosen and set apart to be a kingdom of priests. And there are many times when, in our journey with God, we see him most clearly in the lives and words of our brothers and sisters in Christ. When God seems distant in our prayers, he is near to us in one another. We need to understand that this "relationship with God" is not simply "my relationship with God." It's our relationship. What we do affects one another, even (perhaps especially) on the spiritual level. As a community of faith, we all have a stake in one another's walk with the Lord. That's why so much of the NT is not about prayer or one's personal devotional life (topics we might expect to find if we were trying to reconstruct the NT from the currently bestselling books on the Christian life), but rather, it's overwhelmingly about how we live in relationship with one another.

True religion--this relationship with God--does not find its clearest manifestation in the secret practices of individual devotion, but in care for widows, orphans, and the poor, in forgiveness and mutual submission, and in the practices of building one another up. God is not pleased with the man who spends hours in prayer and yet still deals harshly with his brother. An act of mercy is worth an hour of prayer.

In what is perhaps the most intimate, personally relational passage in the Bible, John 15, Jesus describes his love and friendship for the disciples. And he concludes the thought with his summation of what ought to characterize their lives, in light of his love:

"Love one another."

Publishing Update

2008-09-01T21:28:00.001-07:00

For those of you who might be looking for my new book to come out, I should let you know that it will be a few more months. My publisher, Capstone Fiction, was a very new (and small) entry into the publishing world, and they ran into some legal trouble with their name. Long story short, they've had to change their name, and will now be called OakTara. Their new website will be OakTara.com. As a result of the work generated by the changeover, all newly-contracted books (including mine) will be pushed back about 6 months. But as soon as I find out a firm timetable as to the publishing, I'll let everyone know.

A Theologian's Prayer

2008-08-11T19:45:00.000-07:00

Great Father, Holy God,

As we seek You,

May we ever find.

You who leave no wandering sheep,

Be now the staff that guides us.

So poor in all we seem to know,

Our only wealth is knowing You.

May we know You richly,

Truly,

Fully,

You who lead us into truth.

Be Thou the polestar of our quest,

O Endless and Sublime.

We, the ragged remnant of the Fall—

Seekers of eternal truth—

How we yearn for You!

And so we thirst for knowledge,

So we thirst for truth,

Hoping it will lead to You.

For what we know,

May we know it all in You,

You who are the Truth.

Make us humble in our knowledge,

Faithful in our quest,

And grant what only You can grant.

Where we lack wisdom,

Be its fount for us.

Where we are short in truth,

Guide us to its heart.

Where we are rank with pride,

Teach us true humility.

And for all the questions that we ask,

May they ever lead us home…

Into truth—

Into You—

And endlessly, to grace.