Stuck in the Middle With You

There is more and more evidence that our current educational efforts for our young are failing. The recent report of the results of math and science competition with the world is but the most recent. The drop out rate, the poor performance on end of grade tests, the number of parents home-schooling, and the impact of technology on the learning styles of the coming generation all are major factors in the discussion.

What is also more and more evident is that we are all stuck in the middle with old ideas. The Republican philosophy seems to be pushing for two different solutions. One is the return of neighborhood schools which would result, most likely, in the re-segregating the schools. Most neighborhoods that I see are single ethnic groupings. The other direction that the Republicans talk about is vouchers for parents. This would give parental choice to families but would result in leaving the public schools with the neglected and ignored children.

But the Democratic Leadership does not seem to have any new or better ideas or programs. They talk about pushing for excellence and for new approaches but they are politically tied historically to Teachers Unions which have resisted changes and especially resisted the demand for competency in teaching. They refuse to support or offer ways to evaluate teachers' performances. It is the duty of Unions to work for its members and so Teacher's Union are for protecting the teachers and their first focus is not the education of the student.

There seems to me to be a major need to re-examine the whole educational system. How can we get all of our children to the place of reading and basic math. We need the ability to say that all students will achieve a certain level of skill before moving forward. Nobody gets passed the third grade until they can read, write, and do math at that level. That means pulling out those that do not pass first grade standards at the first grade. It means holding back a second grade child until they can do second grade work. It means a lot of remedial and special attention in these early grades. It may mean that the population of elementary schools will shoot up wildly.

There is a need to develop more educational tracks besides Hard knocks and college. More service skills are needed. Not every child is college material nor wants to be college educated, but almost all work now requires some kind of education beyond high school. Most education needs cooperation of others. It is not apparent that we as a nation are getting our value from our investment in education. We need some people to find away to think outside of the limits of the Republicans and the Democrats and to think about how to prepare our youth for the new world they will be living in.

C'mon Man, Read the Thing

I have lamented in these blogs the obvious fact that there are a host of people who claim to believe the Bible word for word, who apparently have not read it. If the Bible had everything that they believe is in it the book would be three times as big as it is now. It is already a pretty big book. There is lots of stuff in there that is hard to endure in reading. There are lots of stories and history that is like the history of the Lancasters and Yorks in England. But there is a lot of stuff that people claim that is in there that is just not in there. One of the most frequently quoted passages that does not exist in the Bible is the "God helps those who help themselves."

My current disappointment stems from the debate on a local blog about suicide. A man in our area shot his "significant other" and then shot himself. The debate on the blog has been what a nice man he was and yet how unfortunate for him that he will be going to Hell. He is definitely going to Hell, according to the religious experts in our community, because the Bible says that those who commit suicide go to Hell.

Now the Roman Catholic Church has a pretty strong position on suicide that concludes that since the person "kills" himself and does not get a chance to confess and repent of his sins, then the unrepentant sinner goes to Hell. It is a Catholic doctrine, as I understand it.

But a search of the Bible brings forth only about five or six texts that mention suicide. There is Samson who kills himself and many others as he pulled down the towers of the building and it collapsed on the crowd. There is Saul and his assistant killing themselves rather than being capture at the end of a losing battle. There are a couple of other Old Testament references. And then there is Judas who killed himself after betraying Jesus. The Judas event is mentioned in the Gospel and in Acts. But there is not blanket condemnation that all who commit suicide will go to Hell. The Bible just does not say that those who commit suicide go to Hell. As the Roman Catholic Church has done one may build an argument from the Commandments to the position that suicide is an ultimate insult to God as God is the giver of life, and to take your own is to really play God, and is a sin unconfessed and unforgiven and thus one goes to Hell, but that is not the same as it being in the Bible.

C'mon man, read the book. It is not a productive witness to the truth in Scripture to declare things in there that are not in there. When others discover you have lied to them by claiming something is in the Bible that is not in the Bible they will not be likely to believe you testimony again. Bert Erhman is a very vicious and angry critic of Christianity because he grew up in a fundamentalist congregation which swore to him that every word in the Bible was the literal truth. He went to college and seminary and then began to discover that the only possible infallible inerrant Bible was the original first writings and we do not have copies of that first writing. The whole textual history with all of the variants, mistakes and intentional corrections mean that the Bible we have is our best guess. Bert has become one of the best informed historians of the early church,but also one of Christianity's sharpest critics because his congregation lied to him and mislead him.

C'mon man, read the book and stick to what it says. It is amazing enough without having to supplement it with your own collection of ideas from other places.

How Long is Too Long

The debate about medical care has many sides to it. The amount of human intervention into the living and dying process is constant and for the most part beneficial to most of us. But still the mysteries of life and death amaze me. Within the last week there was the very sudden and dramatic death of a man. He had a very serious lung condition but the Doctors had not been concerned. He was feeling good at lunch time and by four o'clock his lungs had filled with fluid and he was dead.

On the heels of that even comes the announcement that a woman who was 105 has died. Her old sister was about that old when she died. But good genes and good medical care and good around the clocking nursing care had preserved both of them for a very long time.

I think it was in the musical Porgy and Bess that a man sings a song about "Methuselah lived 900 years but who calls that living when no woman's going to give in to no man who is 900 years." Well, there is something of the same that could be said for both of those sisters. For the last twenty years of their lives they were confined to the bed. For at least the last 15 years of life for the one who just died, it did not appear to those visiting her, that she knew where she was, that she knew who she was, that she knew anybody who visited her. The nurses would always say that she responded but it was not obvious to me. Who calls that living when you don't know anything? can't do anything? can't remember anything? and all you do is take in food and give it back. Babies do not have to endure that situation more than a year or so.

I am not sure I have a solution to this issue. There are others who are more resolute than I am who might argue "mercy killings." Some would suggest that benign neglect would be wise. These two sisters did not even have children or family members to make those decisions. Distant relatives were all that were remaining. But it is such stories as these that shape our debate about human life and medical care. Our debate about wise use of our limited resources and equipment.

Out There - In Here

In the last few years there seems to have been a very strong public push by a number of writers to eliminate the belief in God. Several major works have been published and have had fairly wide success on the book selling lists. The arguments continue that faith in the supernatural is irrational, illogical, and dangerous. The author point out that there is no objective proof for the existence of God and that such claims for a wise and loving God run contrary to the facts of history: the suffering of humanity, the violence of nature, and the evil in the world. In fact, the evidence is strong that religious convictions have caused as much or more harm than they have done good.

These books seem to have a great deal of success in the market place as there is a perception that society is become more scientific, more technologically advanced, more educated, and more rational. It is believed by many that the belief in the supernatural is waning.

So it is interesting to me that when one looks at the novels that are popular, when one looks at the movies, when one the T.V. dramas there seems to be one theme that is sure to be a success. It is the theme of the supernatural. Vampires, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and a host of other popular expressions reassert the presence of mystery and mysterious powers into life. It is also true that people still say that they may not be religious but they see themselves as "spiritual (whatever that means).

What is supposed to be ruled out by education and science: the presence of the supernatural; is reintroduced by the popular media and the fascination with the possibility of the mystery and mysterious powers. We may want to be rational people but there remains a very active part of us that wants some power greater than our own intelligence to be able to help us.

Goodness - More of the Same

The sport's world seems to be giving me more than I can handle in stupidity. The vast difference between rules and reality. In Tacoma, Washington (as seen on CNN) on a Friday night in a high school football game, a young man scored a touchdown. He knelt, lifted one finger to the sky, got up, gave the ball to the official and got a penalty for ...... I am not exactly sure what was the reason given. There is a rule which was, at the first of the program, given. Excessive celebration - which says that one must not do too much to call attention to one's self. This act is an act that one has seen hundreds of time on T.V. It is an act of devotion in "jock religion" To give God glory for the ability and the success. Never mind that God must have not given the other players who did not tackle him any success. But it is an act that has happened lots of times without a penalty being called.

Now the penalty has drawn much more attention to the event than it would have ever gotten without it. The young man did claim it was a Christian intention of his, but just seeing the event it certainly could have been Allah who was being honored or Yahweh, Buddha or one of the Hindu gods. There is nothing inherently Christian about pointing to the sky. The whole act took all of about two seconds of time.

The Washington State High School Athletic Association gave to CNN another interpretation that another rule says that the ball must be immediately surrendered to the official after the touchdown and the student did not comply with that rule and so was given a penalty. Whatever happened to Thumper's mother's advice, "If you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all?" The Association would have been wiser to say we are talking to the official about his call. And never respond again.

For me it is obvious that this official had an agenda of his own. If that same act has been done hundreds of times around the country in all kinds of sports without penalties being called, why would you call it this time on this Friday night in Washington? I would suspect that this official had decided that if he ever saw someone doing that, he would flag it. Okay, but he has given more attention to that young man than that young man ever expected to receive. CNN reported the 94% of people who responded to their question, said they thought the official had blown the call. Not only that official but the Association also blew the call when they tried to justify it with a second rule.

The Right, The Rule, The Stupid

For the record, let me say that I think that the NCAA's position on Cam Newton is the ethically correct decision. The NCAA has ruled that since there is no evidence that Cam Newton knew what his father was doing, Cam Newton should not be punished and ruled ineligible to pay for Auburn. That decision fits in with all of our concepts of justice and morality. An individual is morally responsible for his own actions. There is no evidence, at the moment, that Cecil Newton, Cam's Father, had any contact with Auburn or made the same offer to them to get Cam to pay if Auburn gave Cecil Newton money. So I think that the position is the better position.

But the problem is that the NCAA has a rule on its books that states that if a parent, relative, friend or adviser violates the rules and asks for "favors" for an athlete, that athlete is ineligible. I do not know when that rule was made but listening to the sport talk shows it is apparently a rule that has been there a while and a rule that is well known. Reggie Bush and USC history has made the rule well known.

So here is one of those great problems of where the rule, the law, and the justice and fairness are in conflict with each other. It is in the middle of such situations that one realizes that all those who preach "law and order," those who claim that somebody broke the law and has to be punished, do not understand the realities of life. We are always living in societies that try to provide structure to community living by the "rules" and yet the reality of our human life together is always different and more complex than the rules. Justice is not always found in rules and law.

The Stupid in this class is the effort that the NCAA is making to try to justify the ruling that they made. The effort to pretend that they do not have a rule about this and to avoid enforcing that rule on Cam Newton. There is apparently evidence that Cecil Newton did shop his son around to colleges in the SEC. That would make Cam ineligible under their rules. The knots that the NCAA is twisting itself into to try both to defend the ruling and to look like they are following the rules is just silly. It just continues to make a mockery of their whole efforts to police the problems.

A Growing Evil

In 1923 G.K. Chesterton was writing for the paper called The Illustrated London News. In March of that year he was in the middle of a debate between Socialism and Capitalism. He argues that neither of the speakers knew what they were talking about and neither of them knew the real problem in England. "They do not refer to the real problem of the present civilisation, which is not property, but the disproportion of property, and, for most people, the absence of property." He complains that the small farmer can not make a living from his own farm and has to go to work as a farm laborer on a commercial farm. Chesterton sees that the small craftsman cannot compete with factories. He concludes, "If we want property to be a part of the commonwealth, we must make it common, not in the sense of a communal ownership, but in the sense of a common experience." (March 31,1923).

The amazing thing is that Bob Herbert in the New York Times (November 30, 2010) reports the same evil in American economy. The bankers, the corporations have been experiencing the greatest profit period in the history of American economics. At the same time that people have been losing their homes, the unemployment rate has been at high levels, the profits of American corporations have been rising and the salaries and bonuses have continued to rise. The gap between the elite rich and the average American citizen has continued to grow and the number of people in the poverty level has been increasing. More and more wealth has become concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. The billionaires have continued to buy political offices and to buy government positions either by running for office themselves or by paying for others to run.

It does not take a Ph.D in history to know that such a growing division is not good for the future of a country. It is the fertile ground for revolution. It is the condition out of which terrorists grow. It is the condition for all kinds of "populist powers" to arise. It is also the sign of a very evil and demonic system which can only end up in its own destruction. If dealing with this problem is condemned as socialism by Glenn Beck and others, then I would urge us to be socialist. If dealing with this is Social Gospel and a heresy, then I want to be a heretic and promote the Social Gospel. There runs throughout my reading of Scriptures the expectation that we will share the blessings of creation together.

The Good News and the Bad News

If I was reading the papers correctly, things have begun better this holiday season than last year. More people at the mall; more people buying big ticket items; more people shopping and spending. That is the good news. Americans buying things is the engine that drives our economy. And the holiday season is the month that makes or breaks most retailers. Which puts us as a society in a very strange place. We are desperate to encourage shopping in this month after Thanksgiving. We want people to buy and buy in uncontrollable excitement.

And yet there is the every increasing pressure to divest our society of its Christian trappings. There is this economy need for the holiday season to be big and to be a time of great shopping and gift giving. But there is an alternative pressure to diminish the reason for the celebration. There has been some effort to try to commercialize the religious traditions of other religions and to create new holiday celebrations which could be used to fuel shopping. It is not an easy tight rope to be walking.

So one might read the data that was being reported as another piece of evidence for good news. The retailers were reporting this week that there were more and more shopper out this Black Friday and that most of the shoppers were out shopping for themselves. They were not buying gifts for others. They were buying items they had been wanting and waiting for the sales. The consumer is back and he/she is just as selfish as every. That is the good news. Buying for themselves the big ticket items, the high tech gadget, and the luxury item long delayed. That is good news from two sides. One, it may mean that this year's bottom line will be black and two, the more selfish the shopping the further it gets away from the Christmas spirit and Christian concept of gifts for others. We will have a robust economy and we will not have to worry about the shopping being inspired by the Christian ideals of gifts for others. That may be both the good news and the bad news.

Job Openings

In these tough economic times with unemployment at such high levels it is important to keep an eye out for job openings. I don't know a lot about the position but I did read a report that said that the Roman Catholic Church was in short supply of Exorcists.

Maybe like a lot of people at my age the only exposure we have had to the work of an exorcists is at the movies. If that is the case then one can understand why the position has not had a lot of people volunteering for it. The report I read did not talk about how many positions were open nor what the salary was nor what the requirements for the position were.

The whole idea of Exorcists raises so many questions about life and the world in which we live. There are so many cases in life where people try to say that they were not responsible because something else made them do it. Flip Wilson always gave the Exorcists an opening, "The Devil made me buy that dress." There are defenses made that abuse as a child made a person do harm to another person. There are defenses that drugs made people do things. Jealousy or hatred dominated a person and made them do some evil. There have been stories of young people who have become possessed by some of the on-line video games. So the idea of being able to cast out those powers that have "taken control" over an individual is a logical solution to the problem.

The idea of an Exorcists also is a logical occupation in a world that is seen as a battle ground between the forces of good and the forces of evil and that some of those evil forces can capture human subjects. St Paul talks about the battles and not all of them are human powers. "And though this world with devils filled, should threaten to undo us" sang Martin Luther in his hymn. If the world is filled with devils, then we need all the different departments of war and the Exorcists would make sense.

Maybe the job of Exorcists is going begging because there are fewer and fewer people who believe in that kind of warfare. Maybe we think that different kinds of weapons are needed. Maybe we think we have better weapons for the battle. Maybe some are like me and are not sure about all the ways that evil can be present in our lives. But somewhere it does suggest that all of it can be cast out by prayer so maybe if we engage in regular devotions we can avoid the need for exorcists.

"Back When We Were Grownups"

I am about to finish another novel by Anne Tyler. This time the novel is called "Back When We Were Grownups." As I think about the other novels that I have read by Tyler, it seems to me that she, like most preachers, has one major story line and she tells that story in a lots of different ways. Anne Tyler seems to spend a lot of time and thinking about the way people look at their own lives. She suspects that most of us think that our lives should have been different. We wonder how in the world did we ever get here. In this version of the story, there is a fifty year old widow who looks at her life one day at a picnic and suddenly realizes that she has been living somebody else life. That somewhere back there she took one fork in the road and it was the wrong fork. She was in college, dating her high school sweetheart, and suddenly at a party a new older man with three little girls sweeps her off her feet and in two months they marry. She drops out of college and she takes on the responsibility of raising those girls, having one of her own, and running the business for the extended family.

She thinks that she was a victim of fate. That events just happened to her so fast that she was swept along. Other people's decisions and wishes were followed and she lacked the courage and the will to take charge of her life. She tries to go back and see what it might have been like to take the other fork in the road. The story is the consequence of that examination.

Surely there is a great deal of material for the question of free will and the providence of another will. Is she being molded to become whom she was created to be even if she did not know that she was supposed to become this new person? How do we make our decisions and what credit or responsibility do we have for what happens to us. Tyler works in a strong sense in some of her works the obligation to accept and live with the consequences of our actions. The interplay between "stuff happens" to us and makes us do things and our human responsibility to make decisions is a major part of her novels.

So often when we do look back at our history and the things that have happen to us that were surprises and that came unwanted there does seem to be a connected thread of Providence that seems to be moving us towards a place that is good for us.

A BETTER BLEND

R. G. Robins writes in his introduction to his book Pentecostalism in America "I struggle into an uptown high church and watch milquetoast frissons ripple through the congregants as their choir downshifts into some honkified spiritual, and I think back to Brother Elmer shouting like a turbo-charge whirling dervish and Sister Trixie, head snapping like a whip, unleashing a staccato stream of other tongues while Sister Vivien torched the piano and Brother Cooper, on the nights he wasn't backslidden, flayed the drums and while my own preacher-man daddy split nifty rifts off his Gretch Signature guitar, with Sister Shirley all the while belting out the gospel blues like some soulful Holy Ghost Loretta Lynn, ..."

What he makes me remember is just how little emotion there is in the average Protestant worship services that I am familiar with. The Presbyterian have been called the "Frozen Chosen" and Robins' description of his Pentecostal worship service gives me a pretty good idea of how far apart the two traditions really are. I could not get our choir director even to use a high school church member who was a great drummer to come in and add a beat to all our hymns.

The human being is a combination of body, mind, soul, heart, spirit, and passion. All of us enjoy different combinations of those elements. It would seem to me that the tradition I had needs a lot more passion and emotions in it and the Pentecostal tradition could benefit from a little more mind. Robins does write that the Pentecostal history is marked by divisions and conflicts over doctrinal and theological positions which suggests the expressions of the holy in words (the mind) matter to them as well.

But it is sad that we could not let it rip once in a while, feel a little passion and emotion in our response to the amazing mystery of life and the gratitude we have for all that we have that we don't deserve. Damn, life can be so good. Damn, life can be so horrendous. We ought to feel it as well as think it. That would be a better blend.

Another crack in an old cliche

It was not the biggest nor the most explosive story in the news lately, but it seems to have a little staying power. It is the story about Judge Clarence Thomas' wife leaving a voice message on the phone of Anita Hill. As I have read the story Judge Thomas' wife called and suggested that Anita Hill might apologize to her husband for the testimony that she gave in the confirmation hearing for the Judge. Now that was 19 years ago. I don't know about other people but I have forgotten a lot of things that happened to me 19 years ago. I did witness the hearings and remember the event, but I had not thought about it recently. I worry a lot more about Judge Thomas' conservative voting record than the events of that hearing.

What this phone call tells me is that the little poem people told me when I was young and other children were calling me names is a lie. "Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you." Try telling that to Judge Thomas and his wife. Apparently the pain is still pretty raw and pretty real. Of course, we have had a number of recent events which demonstrated the error of that poem: the teenage suicides of young people bullied on social media; financial ruin for lots of people lied to by crooks.

The book of Proverbs is said to be a collection of wisdom in compact form. It was used as a text book for leadership. It has some advice about a "soft word turneth away wrath". But the common lore poem about "sticks and stones" is just not true and we ought not to tell it to our children. It would be better to acknowledge the pain that words cause. I think Jesus says something about letting our Yes be Yes and our No's No. James talks about the weapon of the tongue. The words we say can be very dangerous; inflict great harm, and do lasting damage. Just ask Ginnie Thomas.

No Center

For about eight years we lived in Houston,Texas. It has the honor of being the birth place of both of my sons. It gave me a brief insight into the mind and spirit of Texas people. It is where I learned that the South Houston School System purschased student insurance on the football players because they were the only athletes in the school. So I learned about the reality of football. The coach of the University of Texas was quoted one time as saying, "The University of Texas football team has three quarterbacks this year, which means that we don't have any quarterbacks." The fact that none of them was superior to the rest and therefore had established himself is "the quarterback" meant that the coach believed his team lacked leadership.

That experience flashed back when I got the October 19Th Christian Century magazine. On the cover was the big block letter announcement that inside were "The Best Theology Books of the past 25 years." On the inside one discovered that they had put the question of "the 5 essential theological books in the last 25 years" to 8 different scholars and ended up with 40 different titles. Only three appeared on more than one list. The message I get from that survey is that there were no clearly pivotal theological works in the last 25 years. That there may have been lots of nice, thoughtful, well researched works by able scholars, but there were no seminal or dominating works of theology that marked the last 25 years. Every body is doing what is right in their own eyes. While each author is producing something interesting, there is no center, no consensus on the essential theological works. If three quarterbacks mean no quarterback, forty suggested books for the five essential books means there were no essential books.

Perhaps all these diverse works may be the plowing of the landscape so that the ground is fertile for the next great work of theology that is to come.

Did Not Know.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned and I did not even know it. I did not even feel guilty doing it. I did not even know it was mentioned in the Scriptures. My friend had some physical pains and problems that necessitated that he stop playing squash and riding horses so he looked around for something to do while he recovered. He went to a couple of the Yoga sessions at the YMCA and enjoyed them and invited me to come and join him. So, for fellowship with him and for the physical benefits of stretching, I went to yoga sessions for about three months.

Now the President of Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Ky. has come out and announced that Yoga is a religious discipline of the spirit and mind that is contrary to the Word of God. Yoga is not a "fit activity" for Christian people. Yoga has its origin in a spiritual discipline that sees the body as a channel and means by which the Spirit comes into the human person. Albert Mohler says that Christians do not accept the physical body as a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine. Turns out that even Pat Robertson has decided that aspects of Yoga are "really spooky" and ought to be avoided by real Christians.

And there I was doing it and did not even know I was sinning against the Holy. I was one of those who was not aware and failed to see the contradictions between my Christian faith and the participation in the exercises of Yoga. Why even devout Muslims in Egypt, Malaysia and Indonesia have banned Yoga from their faithful. Yoga has to be a lot more wicked than I could even imagine.

How can it be possible that "the body" as a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine" is not a Christian concept? If it is not the body how in the world does Communion work? If it is not the body that is part of the obtaining consciousness with God what are all those monk and nuns doing with fasting, and praying on their knees? Wasn't this one of those ancient councils debate about whether or not Jesus had a real body?

I don't know about Yoga, I just did it to get a thirty minute session of stretching my muscles, and I did not know I was a heretic, but if my body is not part of me and does not help me in my awareness and response to the Holy, then maybe it does not matter what I do with my body. Maybe drinking, smoking, dancing all those things that were once forbidden by Southern Baptists might now be permitted. Gosh, that would be a holy miracle.

Troubled Leaders

I understand that one is innocent until proven guilty, but the charges do make me stop and wonder. There are three or four young men who are making the charges so if they are not true then somebody has been a part of a conspiracy. The Bishop Eddie Long has been sued by these young men for taking indecent sexual liberties with them. These charges against Bishop Long make the number of religious leaders who have been involved in improper sexual conduct more than can be remembered.

We have the whole Roman Catholic Church problem with who knows how many cases of sexual abuse. We have a Colorado megachurch leader who had to resign because of a male prostitute. People may not remember Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart who had their problems with sexual misconduct but they were heterosexual activities. The Rev. Tom Tewell in New York City resigned his position because of an affair with a woman.

There seems to be a twisted connection between those leaders who have been the loudest and the strongest against homosexual activities who seem to be the most tempted to it. There is much to be said for the fact that the Catholic priesthood seems to be an institution built for sexual activities to come out in a unhealthy way.

Of course, it would be wrong to think that ours is the first generation in which religious leaders have misused their positions and indulged in activities that were not sanctioned by the public and by the church. The Old Testament has stories of priest who did behave well.

There seems to be two major causes from what I have been told. One is that when we grant to a leader too much power, too much praise, too much honor and authority, they can become very tempted to believe they can do what they want. The other explanation is that when we give a person too much power, too much praise, too much authority, we also put them too far above us and do not allow them to have normal natural relationships with friends and ordinary people, and the position becomes lonely and exhausting and their need and hunger to be loved comes out in different ways.

The bottom line in all of this is that no religious leader is anything but another human being just like you and me and so should be treated like a person and held accountable as a person.

Against the wind- still running against the wind.

I don't know who wrote it and I don't know if any others sang it, but I remember hearing Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band sing the song, Against the wind. Listening to a message today, that song came to my mind. The message was delivered in the l970's by a minister in Charlotte. It must have been Palm Sunday and he was talking about how the "multitude" was shouting and rejoicing about the coming of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

From that introduction his message was against the wind of almost every Christian preacher I hear today. This man said first of all, we live in a nation where we began because we disliked kings; we rebelled against kings; and we have a historic dislike for Monarchs and Kingdoms. The whole Idea of Jesus as King, if he really wants to have a Kingdom and be a real King, is an insult to our democracy and our democratic ideals.

Turns out there are at least three major cardinal convictions in American society that clash with the proclamation of the New Testament. There is this universal doctrine that we claim we believe in the abstract that all people are created equal. We can never find it in reality. Some talker, some shorter, some blond, some red hair, some smart, some stupid, some fast,others slow. But we claim to believe that all are created equal. And often we take the next step that all opinions are the same. Everybody is equal and every body's opinion is equal. You can see this in our news reports and CNN and the reading of email opinions. There is no place for an expert who knows more than others. But if Jesus is King and Lord of Lords then He says that there are some who are greater than others and you earn that greatness by service to others. Our American philosophy believes that all are equal, and Jesus knows that how we serve others makes us all different.

There is in our American creed the conviction that "free market enterprise" is the path to the great society. That unhindered competition is the right way to go. The whole Ann Rand philosophy of the individualism. The rugged man who follows his dream despite all opposition and triumphs. Of course, that is hard to hold with all of us being equal, but we do believe that all are equal and that if we lined us all up and fired the starting pistol we could let them all run the race and see who wins. There are two reasons that runs counter to Jesus. One is that Jesus calls us to deny self and become part of the community. Jesus says the way to economic justice is cooperation and sharing. Competition is not helpful. Cooperation is the nature of Jesus kingdom. The second reason is that nobody wants an equal playing field. Everybody wants an edge. Everybody thinks giving the other person an equal shot is giving them an advantage.

The third doctrine of American culture is that the majority rules. But in the Kingdom of God there is no majority rule. In our society we claim that the surest way to a just answer to our problems is to vote and see what the "people" want, but we admit that that is not always wise so we have forced upon ourselves laws that project the minority. We claim that we want to have the voice of the people determine the truth, but over and over the voice of the people has been so wrong. Southerners had the voice of the people fight for slavery and their economic way of life. But we all agree now that that was not just or proper.

Some want to claim that America is a Christian nation. Well, it is hard to be a Christian nation when our American ethos is built on a claim that all of us are created equal, that rugged unhindered individualism is the way for economic justice, and the majority rule is the solution to our problems, and Jesus claims that we are not all equal, that some are greater in the Kingdom of Heaven than others, that competition is not the way to a just society, but cooperation is, and that the majority is very often immoral and wrong about what is good and true. Jesus is King not elected Chairman.

Wasted 20 minutes

The work of communication is not easy. It is a great arrogance that preachers have that their sermons are heard and change lives. It is so often that we think we have said something significant only to discover that the congregation did not hear it. Reinhold Niebuhr once said that lots of ministers sneak up on something controversial and then slip by it and think they have been bold to get close while the congregation is grateful that the minister did not go any further. But even if you say something directly it is not always heard.

This preaching stuff is a funny experience. Last Sunday I preached on the story of Moses and God deciding what to do about the children of Israel who have just built and worshipped the Golden Calf. God tells Moses to get out of the way. God is ready to kick some butt and God declares that he is going to burn the whole lot of them up. Moses, like a great Labor leader, knows God better than God knows himself, and Moses knows that God is a promise keeping God. So Moses tells God that if God breaks his promise to the children of Israel after all these years, God's reputation as a promise keeper will be shot. God relented of the evil that he had planned. So I suggested that as Christian people our only hope is that God is still a promise keeper after all the promises we have been made by God through Jesus Christ. Our hope is not in ourselves. Our hope is not in political systems or economic arrangements. Our hope for the future is in the fact that God keeps his promises. It is not in our own ability.

I pronounced the Benediction and walked back to shake hands. The first man to greet me was one of the ushers. He shook my hand and said immediate, "You said this morning something that I believe with all my heart. You got to have faith in yourself."

I had absolutely nothing to say. I was speechless which would have been as useful as my 20 minute sermon.

Hard To Believe

Maybe it should not be too hard to believe. After all, for years many of us have been depressed by the message that was being sent out in the name of Christ from the Crystal Cathedral and Robert H. Schuller. There has to be some kind of delightful irony that the man who talks about positive thinking had to kick his son out because he was not being positive enough.

But what is really hard to believe is the publicly stated reasons why the boy got fired. Robert A. Schuller, the son, was the senior minister from 2006 till 2009. He got the Bobby Bowden treatment when the church leaders decided that his messages were not positive enough. (Perhaps that resulted in there not being enough money sent in in response to his messages) But Robert A. Schuller had actually gone to seminary and studied for the ministry. And here is the real kick in the teeth, "he was criticized by his father because the boy's sermons had too much Jesus talk." A Longtime member of the Cathedral, 83 year old Augustine Remlinger said that the boy relied on the Bible for his sermons. Can you imagine that. A Christian minister who read the Bible and thought it ought to be preached. (My information comes from the magazine The Christian Century for September 7, 2010).

Now they have made the daughter of the founder Schuller the senior minister. When will they discover that it is not a family business? Shouldn't they get a Pulpit Nominating Committee? Have a nationwide search for a new minister?

They wanted positive talk, happy endings, they wanted "the feel good" experience. The members want the "happily ever after" ending, and the son said well, let's listen to the Bible and see what it says. And they were not happy. What delicious irony that the happily ever after ending is not happening at the place where that has been the message for 60 years.

Faith, Hope, and Love

I found a passage by Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian of the 20th century, that I really liked. He said that nothing of any lasting significant value could be achieved by a person in a single life time. So we are always living and working in faith that what we do will matter enough that somebody else will continue it. There was a woman dedicated to helping convicts who were released from prison. She was the founder of an organization. She worked on it for many years. Then someone told her that she really need to turn it loose. To step away and to see if other people valued it enough to keep it going. Because if it was not important enough for others to continue it was not going to last past her working years. We have to work and live in faith.

Niebuhr said that nothing we do of moral significance makes sense within the immediate context of history. So we always have to act in hope. That is, in the midst of the swirling ambiguities of the immediate situation, the proper moral action may not always be visible or may not look like the right thing to do. I have never flown a plane but I have read that in the higher altitudes you have to trust your instruments because your senses cannot tell you where you are or what you need to do. There are moral questions where all your feelings and desires may not tell you what is right and so you have to make moral decision on principles and hope they are good. Faith, hope.

There is nothing of importance or value that we can do alone. One person can make a world of difference: Dr. King, Gandhi, Mandela, but none of them worked alone. They inspired and recruited others. They gave brought people together. They showed us how to work together. Nothing can be done alone and so in the end we have to work in love of others. Love is the equally valuing the contribution of others as much as we value what we do. So in order to achieve what is our heart's desire we have to work with others and so work in love.

Faith, hope and love. St. Paul was right. These three.

Free Will?

There is a line in one of John Pine's song, I heard it on a Jimmy Buffet, Encore,download, about this being a "big old goofy world." And that line came back to me as I read the headline in the newspaper, "College message to parents, Leave, Already." The article talked about the "hover parents," the Velcro parents, the super attentive parent, the ones who have to talk with the children three or four times a day. The colleges have begun to create special ways to separate the freshmen from their parents. It is a big old goofy world.

The old preacher I worked with right out of seminary told me that his parents gave him a suitcase and told him to pack what he wanted. Then he got on a train in his home town and headed off to college. That was all the attention he got. I remember in the 60's when we took my older sister to college. We drove down in the station wagon. We carried her stuff inside, and then we got back in the car and drove home.

When I took my sons to college, there was a three day orientation for students and parents, and I remember thinking why in the world do I need orientation, but they had these sessions about separation anxiety and homesickness on the part of the parents. At one college they began by playing the Beatles song about Leaving Home. I kept thinking I was missing something. I was happy they were in college. It had been something we were planning. It was the next step towards their independence. I don't think I ever called either one of my sons unless there was a specific need.

Apparently the parental desire to help children and to be involved in their lives is so strong that colleges are having to figure out ways to pry the parents out of the lives of the incoming freshmen.

It makes you have to stop and think about the amazing patience and power of God to step back and to allow us as human beings the freedom to live boldly or to mess up. A lot of the evil in the world is a result of our messing up, and yet God's patience continues to work to keep creation within boundaries and to allow us to make our choices. It is something apparently that parental love in many places is having a hard time doing. Colleges are saying that they think that parents need to step back and let their children develop their own identity, make their own decisions, to become independent people. The stepping back part God has done pretty well. Most of the time with God we would like to see God more involved. It is a big old goofy world.

Standing Firm amid the Shaking

There is a passage near the end of the book called Hebrews in the New Testament that talks about a "whole lot of shaking going on." It celebrates the shaking. It tells those who hear the letter to remember what the shaking means. "Yet once again I will shake not the earth alone, but the heavens also. These words "once again --and only once -- imply that the shaking of these created things means their removal, and then what is not shaken will remain. The kingdom we are given is unshakable. Let us therefore give thanks to God.... for God is a devouring fire."

These are comforting works to me. They encourage me not to worry too much about all the turmoil and the agitation that always seems to be going on. It means that I try not to "preserve and protect too much" The whole talk about "passing on things to future generations" and "maintaining things" of value sounds like a lot of frightened talk and a whole lot of lack of faith in the God of the Future. I would think that we might be a little more interested in the shaking so that we, in fact, might discover what will be left standing. It does not sound like it is my job to protect or hold on to those things that are unshakable. It is merely to let go of the things that are shaking and watch what falls.

The image of "God is a devouring fire" with visions of those forest fires in Southern California is not an image that would fit the modern talk about God. There is lots of talk about God refining us and purifying us. There is the laundry image of God washing us and making us clean. There is a judge that pronounces us innocence, a miscarriage of justice if there ever was one. There are other images but the image of God as a raging fire burning all that is around it is not a very loving and comforting image. We want the teddy bear God and the "best friend" God.

Both of these images forces us to acknowledge that there is a massive amount of stuff that is going to have to be cleared away and destroyed before we find ourselves in the presence of the Holy One.

Came to bring a Sword

There has been posted on Facebook an essay by a preacher who claims that part of the reason for ministers' leaving the ministry, for depression and emotional burn-out is the fact that most congregations want their pastors to preach positive, happy, entertaining sermons. That members move from church to church looking for a minister who will not challenge their convictions, will not preach against some of their habits, will confirm their prejudices and political positions and will do all this positive and happy stuff in an entertaining and pleasant way. The article was an editorial in one of the New York papers. But there have been plenty of other evidence that the "feel good, prosperity, self-centered full potential" movement has come to be the standard by which all preaching in local congregations is judged. I do not know a preacher who has not had a member comment that he would really like to leave church of Sunday morning feeling good, happy and positive. Congregations have been known to remove the Confession of Sin from their service because it made people feel bad.

It is no wonder that passages like "You must not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a son's wife against her mother-in-law, and a man will find his enemies under his own roof."(Matthew 10:34-35) do not get preached very often. Passages like these seem to indicate that Jesus did not come to make us all feel happy, positive, and self-confident. The challenge is to force us to look at ourselves and make some very deep and difficult decisions. "Did you ever have to make up your mind? Pick up on one and let the other ones ride? None of them easy, none of them kind? Did you ever have to make up your mind?"

It is not possible to have it all. There is the parable about the man who sold all of his little pearls for the one pearl of great price. We are presented in the Good News a choice, a decision, a hard decision. Either to live in the hope that this is God's creation and world and God will bring it to fulfillment and bring his purposes about (and it is not something we can go out and accomplish)and to live as a citizen of that kingdom now even if it is not yet a reality or to live as if this is our one chance and we had better grab all the gusto now and to hell with everybody else and anything else.

To present that choice to a congregation who wants to think very little, feel very good, and to live contentedly in the culture they live in is a tremendous risk and a rare thing. So if you leave worship and feel angry and disturbed by what you heard, look up, rejoice and be glad, perhaps your redemption is drawing nigh.

Again

The other day it happened again. I went to a funeral and after the family and others had said all kinds of nice things about the woman, the minister got up and told about his conversations with the woman about death and eternity. He wanted to assure us that the woman was ready to meet her Lord and that she was comfortable in her faith in the resurrection. Then he asked "Are you?" The old "used the funeral to push evangelism" trick. This minister was much smoother at it than others I have heard, but rough or smooth it is manipulative and offensive to me. Just give thanks for the deceased, trust her to the goodness of God and go home. Those in attendance will get the question if they are ready for it.

Jesus says we are to be ready to give a defense for the faith that is in us, but he does not say we are to push it on those who do not ask us about it.

The last straw?

I think of myself as rather progressive. I mean around my town they think I am a radical liberal. I think I am a moderate Christian, but nevertheless, I was surprised by my own reaction. I have no problem with the projection of hymn words up on the wall in worship. I have seen organists take a computer onto the console and have the music scrolled for them to play on the computer. It saves carrying all those books. I am one who scripts all my public presentations. I am trying more and more to get free from just reading the script, but I have almost nothing in my leading of public gatherings unscripted. So I have no problem with people having their message written down.

But when the speaker carried his Apple Laptop into the podium, opened up and began to read his comments from his computer screen, something in me was displeased. I have no logic for it. I realize that it is totally inconsistent, but still something in me was not happy with that arrangement. You can tell me that most public speakers have computer tell a prompters at conventions and meetings. And I do not know what the difference for me is. But to have his head half hidden behind an Apple laptop just did not rub me the right way.

There is a part of me that hates being one of those who always opposes the new thing. And I cannot tell you what my problem with a speaker reading from his computer instead of a typed page, but I did not like it.

So we are all walking contradictions; partly truth and partly fiction. And I just saw myself in pieces again.

It is not that easy to do.

It is one of those things that we are all told we should be able to do, but it is one of the hardest things there is to do. When you make a mistake, we are told to step up and acknowledge it and apologize. When we are not able to do a job, we need to speak up so that those in charge can get someone who can do the job. When we hurt a person's feelings we are encourage to ask forgiveness. That social transaction is often urged, frequently spoken about, and often described as a straight forward doable thing.

But it has to be one of the hardest things that people are asked to do. There is a recent example of a person in a leadership role who has not fulfilled her duties for the first half of this year. The leader of the group has been trying for a month to get with her to talk about the failures and to encourage her to step aside. The hope was a resignation so that the group could get on with its business. The conversation has not taken place and the person has refused to communicate with the group leader. Phone calls, emails, facebook messages have all failed to get the person to talk to the group leader. There is no salary, no job on the line, there is only the difficulty for the person to admit the failure to perform. But apparently she just can not do it.

The small struggle of that person reminds me of why the whole act of confession, repentance and new direction so often talked about within the Christian community, frequently talked about as being so simple, so easy, so quick is really such a major, difficult and radical thing. To admit failure, to confess it, to change and act differently, is an incredible act of self-sacrifice and self-humbling. We ought to celebrate and applaud that kind of admission, acceptance and confess a lot more because it is a lot more difficult to do.

No Joy in Mudville

There was a poem in my childhood which for some reason was frequently quoted. It was a Mighty Casey and he was at bat in baseball game. It is a story poem and Mighty Case strikes out at the end. "There is no joy in Mudville tonight for Mighty Case has struck out."

I guess I thought of that poem when the Campaign Director for the Elaine Marshall's campaign for Senate from North Carolina suggested that Elaine had a very good chance to beat the current Senator Richard Burr because there is a "very unhappy electorate out there." He said that people are just not happy with what is happening in Washington. Whether it be the "Tea Party people" or the Obama enthusiast, people do not like what is happening in Washington. "There is no joy in the country as politicians have struck out." They have not gone up there and worked to solve the problems. And people know we have some major problems that have to be addressed.

There is not much joy in the country at the moment. Joy has its roots in the fullness of a moment. Joy is that emotion that happens when we have more love, more acceptance, more kindness than we can handle. Joy is alive in those moments when we are feeling more than we can express. Joy is the overflowing emotion. Joy comes in being able to give more than is expected or receiving more than you hoped. But there is no joy in lots of places in our country now because most of our cups are on the low side. The poor and the middle class have seen their cups of dreams and hopes become more and more empty. There is no overflow in the poor and the middle class. And the rich have suddenly found that their unlimited overflow has begun to dry up. There is so little deep and abiding joy in our society because there is so few moments of feeling that overflow of "more than expected, more than deserved, more than one wanted, more than was possible."

Certainly there are personal joys. There are gifts given by loved ones that bring joy to the receiver. There are relationships which constantly give to both more than they deserve, but there is little joy in Mudville at large because nothing is overflowing and in fact what is in the cup is getting less and less.

A Unique Place

It was the only place in my forty years of ministry where we took seriously the notion of the communion of saints. His name was H. Louis Patrick and he was pastor of the Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, N.C. The church tended to be a fairly high liturgical congregation. This Presbyterian Church had an Episcopalian Choir Director who gave Trinity acolytes and a lot of "high church" traditions. But the inclusion of a weekly prayer for the Communion of Saints was the pastor's decision. Every week we prayed for "all those who having lived with Thee on earth, now live with Thee in Heaven." We prayed that we might live in such a faith that we would be united with them in Heaven.

Lots of the congregations with which I worked professed in the Creeds they said that they believe in the Communion of Saints, There was always something about the Saints of the Church on All Saints Sunday in November, but Trinity was the only place I ever worked that included a prayer for the Communion of Saints in every week's worship. There are other Christian traditions which include more prayers and traditions about the Communion of Saints, But at Trinity with Dr. Patrick we prayed for those saints who had lived and died in faith. We prayed for them with the same notion that people in the USA lived and prayed for their citizens in Europe during World War II. The liturgical practice of praying for the Communion of Saints kept alive in our awareness the kind of faith and affirmations that we made in other congregations only at Funerals.

Such liturgical practices do have an impact. Here it is more than 35 years later and I still remember that has been the only congregation I have served that took seriously the whole notion of the church being both those living now and those who are living in the resurrection We are both part of the kingdom of God and the faith is that we will all be reunited in the love and power of God.

Round and Round

I watched the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America yesterday on line. By chance I happened to end up watching the debate on changing the requirements of ordination and the debate about civil unions and marriage. I do not know if there are other reports to be presented that deal with sexuality, but these two reports are definitely focused on homosexuality.


I have been told that the wheel of history turns slow but grinds very fine. There is little evidence in the General Assembly debates yesterday that the wheels of history having turned at all. The striking thing to me was that the arguments in the debate sound exactly the same as they did almost forty years ago.


Of course there is the great Scriptural quoting argument. On one side there are those who quote the Biblical verses that declare same sex a sin and that marriage is between a man and a woman. On the other side there are the Biblical passages that talk about Jesus being forgiving of adultery, that Jesus never mentions homosexuality, and the argument that the Old Testament has many harems and concubines.


There continues to be the parry and thrust between defending and holding fast to tradition and the values of our reformed heritage. We must remain faithful to the legacy of the confession of our faith. The other side responds we are and our tradition is Reformed and yet always reforming. We have overcome slavery and opposition to women as clergy and leaders by following the spirit of the reformation. So the argument goes back and forth.


It seems to me that the next level of argument is timing. We need to study the issue at the local level. Now is not the time for the church to be making big decisions. We have just made a lot of other radical reforms and the people cannot handle too many changes. The issue may be important and the proposals maybe good, but now is not the time to bring that to the local church.
The respond to that has always been, if not now when. The argument about timing and need for study has been made for more than thirty years. If we don't do it this year, we will have to wait for two more years and who knows if things we "be better" then. What has been achieved in the time delays of the past? Nothing. So one side says now is not a good time. The other counters with you have delayed these issues every time by that old argument. Now is the time.


Of course, the argument of last resort is the membership issue. Both sides use this one. One says if we give approval to homosexuals to be ordain or for same sex couples to be united in recognized relationships people will leave the church. We are already losing members. This will just drive more away. The other sides says we are losing members because we are so old fashion. One youth claimed that young people are not coming to the Presbyterian Church because it is so old fashion and so hung up on these issues. The young, it was claimed, want to be active in ministry and the church is stuck debating a non-issue for these young people. Either decision will cost the church members according to the debate.


I listened in vain to hear some evidence that the debate had changed, had deepened or had progressed. It sound for all the world like the first debate on these issues I heard in the 80's. I did not even stay up past 11:30 p.m. to hear the final vote because I doubt very much if it would be a "final" vote. One thing I do know for sure is there is no place to go, no place to hide from these issues. Every church, every school, every institution has or will have to face these issues and decide. And these debates suggest that the decision will have to be made without any new arguments.

A Fourth of July Mystery

There are a number of fundamental principles that make the United State an amazing place to live. Most of the time we enjoy them and take them for granted without thinking about them very much. There are always debates as to which of the fundamental rights are most important to our nation, but I would suggest that the right of the individual to have his/her day in court when accused of a crime and the right of every person to vote are the two most important privileges citizens have in this country.
I have only served on one jury. I have gladly responded when summoned. The times I have been called to be on a panel the defense lawyers almost always excuse me because ministers are profiled as being harsh, vindictive, and judgmental (something that saddens me greatly). The jury that I served was in Texas and the case was a charge of drunken driving for a construction worker. The crew had topped off a building, brought a barrel of iced beers to celebrate, and then the worker drove home. He claimed he had only a “couple of beers” but the Breathalyzer had a different story. But society paid the jury, the judge, the jailers, the clerks, the prosecutor and a host of other people good salaries so that man could protest his innocence.
That same thing goes on every day all across the country. As a society, we pay an immense amount of money for a legal system that is created to enable each of us to have our day in court. We have invested large amounts of time and energy to try to make a system that begins with the assumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Certainly there are all kinds of evidence that the system has flaws; that money has power to distort the process; that race has played a major part in the outcome of too many cases; and that the system is over burdened with too many cases. But as a nation the USA has invested a remarkable amount of resources in creating a system to try to protect the rights of an individual.
The same can be said for the effort made by society to establish the right of everybody to vote. We as a nation have been working very hard over the last two hundred years to create a system of democracy so that all citizens are entitled to vote. It is well known that even with the highest of ideals – “all men are created equally and endowed by their creator with certain rights” – the country did not actually live up to that standard for a long time. It has been a long hard fought journey to the right to vote for all citizens. But as a country we have invested great energy, get resources, get time to making democracy available. The recent run-off election, the total cost to all counties to conduct that election, I am told, was over $3 million dollars. That is an incredible amount to spend so that less than 200,000 people can have a say in selecting a candidate. Not picking the Senator, just voting on picking a candidate.
We have good reason to be proud of our country on the Fourth of July for its commitment to protect the legal rights of individuals and to insure the right to vote of all citizens. The mystery is that most of us as individuals keep trying to figure out how to avoid jury duty and so often fail to show up to vote.

Nothing to Read

What a depressing visit to Barnes and Nobles book store. A couple of days ago I went into the Barnes and Noble book store in Raleigh, N.C. I was looking for something to read in the religious dimension of life. I did find a very large section of books, but I could not believe the stuff that was included there. If St. Paul was concerned that disciples who should have been ready for meat were still taking milk and toast, then we are back to formula. The shelves seemed to stocked with only the prosperity gospel, personal achievement, sentimental stories, and the road to happiness. (In 1960 a retiring minister in England told me that the greatest change in people in his ministry was that when he started people wanted to be good. When he retired they wanted to be happy. He was not sure the Gospel was about either.) So the publishing business is not into producing for mass consumption solid religious reflection and study.

That must mean that nobody buys that kind of book. Not in numbers big enough to make it worth the printing. The religious reading public wants what is being produced. The people seem to want easy reading, simple answers, and happy endings. A religious romance novels.

Of course, the other possibility is that there probably are not many religious thinkers and writers who can write for the general public and present the challenges of the religious life, the journey into the mystery with faith, and the high cost of living ethically in a moral confused world. It seems that C.S. Lewis is still the only one who is published who raises some of these questions and tries to answer some of them. I only saw the new book by Harvey Cox in the whole section. Harvey Cox did raise some great questions with his first book.

The search will go on. I know it is not at the seminary in Wake Forest. So the search something to read will continue. But I do pity the faithful disciple in a local congregation who is hungry for meat.

Too Late

Hopefully it is one of those moments when a lot of people learn a simple less. Doing it right can save you a whole lot of heartache. Morehead City, N.C. has a fishing tournament called the Big Rock. They go deep sea fishing for Blue Marlins and the biggest fish gets the biggest prize. This year the prize was more than $900,000 dollars, and an extra prize for a fish over 500 pounds on the first day.

The boat came in with an eight hundred and eighty-three pound fish. Everybody was impressed and the tournament was thrilled. No boat came in with a bigger fish all week. Other fish were caught but the next fish was 500 pounds. But the events took a very sourer turn when they began to check the people on the boat for fishing licenses. Rules say that everybody on the boat has to have a fishing license. $15.00 per person per year. Turns out one of the "mates" on the boat did not have one when the fish was caught at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The mate bought one, on line I guess, because they said he bought it at 5:00 o'clock as the boat was coming in. Because he did not have a license when the fish was caught the boat was disqualified and the people lost more than a million dollars in prize money.

There are a lot of tough lessons in that story. There is the lesson that it is cheaper and better to do it by the rules from the beginning. There is a whole study of the collective punishment for one person's sin the whole boat suffers. Who knows why the mate did not have one when he went out. They obviously knew that he needed it as they got him one as soon as they could. Ah, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive.

Back Where They Started

Another minister friend told me about his congregation. He said it was a good congregation and could be a great congregation with seven or eight good deaths. A couple of years later he said he had had seven or eight funerals but he said the wrong people died That comment is suggestive that most ministers believe that the church they serve would be a whole lot better if the people who oppose them could be removed. There are always some people who are not on board with what any minister wants to do.

If you can't bury those who oppose you, then sometimes you can make them angry with you and they leave. That was the hope I had in my ministries. If you could just encourage them to join another church, then both of us would be happier. Well, sometimes it is not possible to find another church so they just stay home, which works pretty well. But the delightful thing that has come to my ears with the new minister is that they are celebrating at the church that all of the people that I drove away have begun to come back in response to the new minister. Here I thought I was doing him a favor by clearing out the unproductive branches. The joy at the church is that "most of those that had left are now coming back."

That is probably why the most successful ministers are those who stay in one place for a very long time. If you stay in a place like Frank Harrington in Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta for 25 years, you drive the ones who don't like you away and they don't come back because you never leave.

It is also a great example of what the folk singer Jimmy Buffet has in mind with a song about birthdays and retiring. "The one thing that I've learned in all this living is it would not change a thing if I let go." None of us is irreplaceable and when you pull the stick out of the water, the water just flows back and you would never know the stick had been there. Churches are like that. Ministers go and the old members flow back in and it is just like it was. They are back where they started. But I had a good time while there and hope the new minister has a good time driving away the ones he does not want.

Why Not?

Maybe I should just mind my own business. It is not an election that I get to vote in. I do not live in the state where the questions are being raised, but I am fascinated by the choices. There is a young woman who is rapidly becoming the leading candidate for the Republican candidate for Governor in South Carolina. As if South Carolina Republicans did not already have enough problems with their Governor. But Nikki Hawley is getting a lot of attention because of her attractive personality and her position on the issues. But the emerging issue upon many Republican evangelicals is that Nikki Hawley was raised as a Sikh disciple. She has recently converted to Christianity, but like other candidates from former religions who recently convert to Christianity, there are many leading right wing evangelicals who are "suspicious" about her commitment and her devotion to Christ.

I wonder if those who are complaining about her religious background know what a Sikh believes. Since I am so often flabbergasted by what Christians claim the Bible says, suggesting that they do not even know what their own Holy Book says, that I am not convinced that they would have taken the time to know what a Sikh believes. My own brief research on the subject says that the Sikh religion believes in one immortal being, God, has the requirement to follow the teaching of ten teachers. Those teachings focus on worship, mediation prayer; hard work and middle class (modest life) and a responsibility to share with others and to be of service to others. They are expected to be honest, content, selfless, "talk sweetly", fidelity and faithfulness in sexual activities, and to pray five times a day. There is a doctrine of reincarnation that is part of the teaching.

None of that sound too badly to me. I think the Reincarnation issue is a great divide, but it would have little impact on her political decisions. Maybe even help if she believes she would have to come back and live with the consequences of her decisions.

Seems to me the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scout have something of a similar life creed.

Nikki Hawley has joined a Methodist congregation and attends regularly the paper reports. But suppose she was still a practicing Sikh. I would much prefer to vote for a faithful, devout, obedient Sikh for an office of Governor, than to vote for some of the worthless people who claim to be Christian like the David Greene who is a Democrat running for office in the state of South Carolina. I am convinced that what we believe matters to what we do and how we live. The content of faith does have consequences. The old claim "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe something" does not fly with me. What you believe does matter. But what you really believe is evidenced by what you do. If Nikki Hawley could live up to the Sikh creeds and teachings as a Governor she would be a much better Governor than what they have had.

Even Jesus said that it is by the fruits of their actions that you will know those who are of the kingdom and those who are not.

Amazing difference

A friend suggested that perhaps God was having second thoughts about some of the things He had said. (Sorry for the male pronoun, but I think you have to use a personal pronoun and this is the standard one.) My friend suggested that in the light of the mess in the Gulf of Mexico that God might want to take back the "dominion" over creation that God was brave enough to give to humanity. Certainly when God flooded the earth, He commented that the evil that human beings had discovered made Him regret having created them. My friend suggested that maybe, just maybe, even without including the possibility of climate change and global warming in the discussion, maybe the decisions made by BP to cut corners, save money, skip the necessary testing of the deep water well and then say that it was a "big ocean" when the spill first happened by itself would be enough to depress God and make Him wish he could take back that "dominion" gift. I understand that the word in Hebrew translated Dominion here is much more a word that would suggest that we are to be stewards and care takers of creation rather than the dominance and exploitative notion of dominion.

The contrast for me is radical in my recent return from Tanzania and the massive amount of land that has been set aside as National Park and Conversation areas. The Serengeti plains are a National Park and no human is allowed to live in the Park. There are some lodges and hotels in the park and they have staffs, but no one lives and ranches in the Park. The Conservation areas are massive land areas where animals, land and natural environment are protected, studied and nurtured. Certainly Tanzanian government has worked very hard to preserve the Serengeti plains. Tourism is a major source of income and it is to their advantage to preserve the wilderness which draws people to visit. But they have not even allowed paved roads in the park. They are working hard to learn how to be good stewards and partners with the animals and landscape.

In fact there are several areas in which I think they will be able to teach us. One, Tanzanians and their country have learned how to live with little water. Rain is very precious and there are terrible periods of drought, and so they have learned to conserve and to be good stewards of water. As other nations grow and water becomes more precious in other countries we will need to learn from them how to survive with little water. Two, they have already begun to invest in alternative energies. Especially solar power. They do not have a lot of old power equipment and lines and there is not a lot of money invested in old infrastructure. They have lots of sun and lots of wind. The hotels and other businesses are already into wi-fi and satellite communications. Even in that country almost everybody has cell phones.

There are lots of things, I suspect, that bring tears to the eyes of God. The way we treat the wonders of creation, the way we treat the amazing diversity of people, the way we waste and spoil our lives by the pursuit of "lesser things." But I think my friend may be right, God must be shaking his head and saying, "What was I thinking to ask them to take care of my wonderful creation."

As it was given to us

Doris Betts, who taught creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill for many years and who has written a number of novels herself, has a character in a story observer that people sure have changed. The character says that people used to go on trips to see how things are in other places. People used to go and see the wonders of creation. But people now have changed. They go to see what somebody has made. They go to see and visit what somebody sat in an office and made up. They designed it. They built it and now they charge you money to see it. People used to go see the Grand Canyon now they go to Las Vegas. They used to go to Florida for the beaches. Now they go to Disney Land (or World, I can never remember which is in Florida and which is in California). They used to go to see what we had been given. Now they go to see what we have made and have to pay.

I do not know whether or not that is true. I do not know whether you would call the number one tourist attraction in North Carolina, The Blue Ridge Parkway, something that was built or something that enables people to see what we have been given. I do know that when I mentioned that I was going to Tanzania to see the Serengeti Plains, the Ngorongoro Crater, and the Olduvai Gorge with all the wild animals, a man said you can go to a place in Florida to see all those animals and it is safer. Well, I want to see them as nearly as natural as I can, the way they have been given to us in the wild.

According to a number of religious traditions humanity was given responsibility for caring for creation. Looking at things in the Gulf right now it does not appear that we have done a very good job of that care or protection. On the one hand it means that we better go see nature as it was created quickly because it will not last very long, and we may need to study them to see if we can find a way to be better stewards of the gifts we have been given.

I am excited about the trip. It is a big world and it is a gift to be enjoyed.

Erosion

Words to a song get stuck in your mind and often can almost drive you crazy. So phrases and slogans can stick with us and ramble around in the brain. The picturesque point in the New Testament about "moth and rust" that destroy has been entertaining me. What continues to strike me as interesting is that it is the fragile thing that can destroy the stronger thing. The moth would certainly seem to be more fragile than the coat. Rust is just a powder yet it destroys the sword. There is a word of warning that we need to be careful of the weaker things because they have power to overthrown the mighty things. Of course, we have celebrated that when we claim that the pen is mightier than the sword. But there may be a down side as well

Certainly there is evidence from history that it is soft doubt and lack of convictions that can topple societies. I think there is a poem which suggest that anarchy comes when the best lack all conviction. The frightening thing, I think, about the current Terrorists is that they are zealots. They have great conviction and they are engaging a western civilization which seems to be so unsure of anything that it has no power or position with which to counter the attack.

The moth, the rust, the drip of water, the gradual assumption of moral relativity, the soft acceptance of "anything goes" suggest that it is so easy for the soft things to destroy the strong things.

Source of Hope

First, a small point of personal privilege. I think it began in the 8th grade when I started playing basketball, but "getting into double figures" has always been a source of great satisfaction. To average double figures as a basketball player was a goal. Even in the pro's they count the double double and triple doubles of the stars. Then when I became the Pastor of Bethel Presbyterian Church I was the 10th pastor in their 225 year history. The first four ministers served for a 160 years. Yeah, the average pastorate was 40 years each. The next six did not do as well. But I told them how excited I was to be the pastor who reached double figures. I was the first one to get double figures. Now I am excited and pleased to get double figures in the followers of this blog. There are 10 people who follow this blog. And I am very grateful to all of them.

A friend just suggested that the Bible may be called the Good Book, but when it comes to reading a book, most people would rather have a naughty book. People claim to believe what the Bible says but they do not know what it says. Today is celebrated in the Christian tradition as Pentecost Sunday when the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples. The Spirit of anything is the power that gives it life. That is why Mary Kay and Wal Mart have all those pep rallies and associates gatherings. The power of the Marines is its spirit. The Spirit gives energy, power, determination, and joy. The Spirit comes to a group as it lives and struggles together for a purpose. The Christian spirit is in the church as it lives and struggles to be the body of Christ. Muslims have a Spirit.

One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is to give life to the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit is the gift that brings us into contact with the story of the Scriptures so that those stories are part of our living conversation. The Holy Spirit brings alive the stories of the Scriptures so that we read those stories as stories of real people with real lives, with real challenges, with real doubts, and with real decisions. The Voice of God did not speak to Moses, Joseph, Abraham, Jeremiah, and the rest any more clearly than the Voice of God whispers to us. The Spirit of God enables us to realize that the presence of God is found in the give and take of every day life. There were lots of other voices and powers claiming to be God's voice in Jeremiah's day.

The Holy Spirit is given to give encouragement to us as we read the Scriptures to hope that whereas those in the past have found God in the midst of their daily, average, ordinary lives so too we will hear and find the voice of God as we struggle to hear it in our confused and complicated lives. The Holy Spirit comes to bring to life the struggle to hear and to be faithful to what we hear. The Holy Spirit comes in fellowship with others who are searching and who know that the search and the seeking after truth and justice matter. It is not so much that God did stuff in the past, the Holy Spirit brings those stories alive so that we might be alert to where that voice is speaking now.

Not Getting What you Want?

We were driving through eastern North Carolina. We would go through these little communities. There would be four shops, a gas station, and ten churches. There was all the evidence you need for why the South is called the Bible Belt. The buildings were small. There were of all kinds of construction. They had all kinds of different names: First Divine Temple of the Living God; The Higher Hope; Missionary Zion Apostles; Redeemer's Home.

I mentioned that on the Henderson Board of Adjustment of the City Zoning, we had had more requests for special use permits for churches than any other request. The person I was riding with said something about how much better it would be to build one big church and bring them all together. But then she said that she could understand why people would keep looking for a church. "If they are not getting what they want from a church, they ought to check out others until they find what they need."

That thought provoked from me the response, "Get what they wanted? There is a very long line of people in the Bible who never got what they wanted from God. Moses did not want the job. Jeremiah did not want the job of being a prophet. Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. Daniel did not want to go into the Lion's den. Jesus did not want to go to the Cross. Paul was opposed to the whole Christian movement. Where did we get the idea that we know what we need in our spiritual life? In fact, maybe the place where you are hearing exactly what you don't want to hear is the place where God is most directly dealing with you."

In fact, I would be willing to wager that it is more often than not where we are being told what we do not want to hear that we have the chance of being guided by the Holy.

The Greater of These

NBC Nightly News carried the story. The man had been in prison for thirty years. He had been convicted of rape of an eleven year old girl. Throughout those thirty years he always maintained that he had not committed the rape. Finally science and technology progressed, and out of an old blanket that had been kept in the evidence room, they were able to find some DNA of the man who committed the rape. It was not the DNA of the man who had been in prison for thirty years. The Nightly News story was about the man's release,declaration of innocence, and return to civilization.

While being interviewed all the man could do was talk about how grateful he was to be out; how excited he was to be home; what a delight to walk around and see all the things like cell phones, ipod, laptops, and ipads at the malls. He was planning on seeing a Cavalier basketball game in person as guest of the team.

It was not a long interview and it was only a few days after he had had the verdict set aside, released, and his record cleared when they talked with him. His reaction during the interview was all in the direction of joy, thanksgiving, release, and celebration.

The whole story caused me to wonder about our human responses to the things that happen to us. It would seem to me that there might be two major responses in him: great joy and thanksgiving for being released and great anger,resentment,sorrow and hostility towards the system that never believed him and took thirty years away from him. Thanksgiving is the dominant response now. Does the anger come later? Do they alternate in his days. Some days thinking how wonderful it is to be out finally. Some days tasting bitterness for all the years that were taken from him.

Is his thanksgiving and delight a personal response and others might be more consumed by bitterness? Is there a pattern that those who have been captured and imprisoned for a long time are so relieved and happy to be finally freed that the joy overwhelms the heart and thanksgiving is the dominant response? Will there come moments when he regrets being free and would like the security and routine of his former life?

The story is a source of lots of interesting questions about human emotions. Lots of people are in their own prisons and are offered freedom and pardon. Is thanksgiving and celebration the abiding dominant reaction to freedom?

Anger and Frustration

The room was full of politics. All of us there were waiting and watching the election returns of the May Primary. The distinguished gentleman next to me was observing that "the Tea Party Revolution" was going to be a major factor in the coming election in November 2010. "Whatever passion and anger that is driving that crowd is going to have to be acknowledged and dealt with," he said.

There was more conversation about the world of politics, and he later commented that there was an inevitable merging of government agencies that regulate industries with the industries themselves. EPA regulators become officers in corporations that have environmental issues and corporate officers are appointed to regulatory agencies. Security and Exchange Commission eventually gets identical to investment firms. The people who are supposed to regulate industries are best friends with the people in the industries.

Perhaps that is one of the sources for the anger and frustration of the Tea Party people. Government is not working for the people. I think a lot of us believe that Government is supposed to be on the citizen's side. Government is supposed, we hear so often, to work for the little people. But government is not working that way.
Government is supposed to protect miners from disasters, but the Government agency that regulates mines finds violations of safety issues but cannot make the corporation comply. Government is supposed to protect us from environmental crisis but the agencies that regulation the oil industry do not require planning for disasters. One chance in a thousand is dismissed as "never happen." The Food and Drug administration is supposed to protect us from tainted food, but again and again violations and no action.

There is great joy and celebration when agencies cooperate and capture a terrorists in 54 hours. That shows that government can work. That is what we want. We want government to protect us from the dangers. There is greed and evil in all of us and it is even greater in corporations. There are national problems that only national government is big enough to address. Government is suppose to keep those evil powers in check. But the anger and frustration is that government is no working for us.

The immigration issue is an issue that needs national solution, but Government is not working. Airline industries need to be required to do safety inspections but Government deregulated them. Who inspects sheet rock from China for construction or toys with lead paint? Why does the Auto industry get to tell Congress how many miles per gallon they want? Government is supposed to work to protect the people from pollution.

John Calvin set up the Presbyterian form of government because of the doctrine of depravity of humanity. All of us are tainted with selfishness and pride. The job of the committee is put limits on the temptations of each other. I try to limit your reach of selfishness and you limit mine. As the Supreme Court has just reaffirmed Corporations are individuals in the law. Well, we need some power to be the one who watches the reach of selfishness and greed in the corporations and government is supposed to be that watcher. It is not working or it is doing a very poor job of it. No wonder a lot of people are angry and frustrated and ready to "revolt."

Cash Cow

There are many good reasons to suspect that the life blood of politics is money. That fact is not new or something unknown by others. And I am certain that what I have suddenly realized has been common knowledge for others for a very long time. What I suspect is that there are certain political issues that do not get solved in Congress because their debate is a great source of money. They are the hot ticket issues that generate great passion and thus great contributions. They are brought up and argued and then they are allowed to fade unsolved because they produce great waves of contributions to politics.

My hunch would be that Immigration Reform is one of these. It is not a complicated nor difficult problem to solve. Even President George W. Bush was able to come up with a good plan. But it is an issue that has great passion in it and thus swells the bank accounts of parties on both sides.

It is an issue that should be easily compromised. There are some very clear givens. There is no way we are going to send all of them home. There is no way politically that a bill will get pass that just grants "amnesty" to all of them. So it would seem to me that the reform would include something about better border regulation; a process by which all who are here who want to become legal come forward and confess that they have violated the law. There will then need to be some kind of punishment. A Fine of some size. The punishment is one of those places where compromise is needed to find a good balance. There would need to be avenues for all who are here illegally to become legal, either citizenship or work papers. Again the steps for citizenship or legal work status can be brokered. Those who have criminal records would be subject to deportation. There are lots of little pieces that would need to be included but that is where good political "horse trading" would be wonderful.

Neglect of this issue continues to make it worse. But solving it would probably deprive the body politics of a great cash cow. But it is certainly true that the measure passed in Arizona to deal with it appears to me to be a great violation of our American rights under the Bill of Rights.

The Preacher's Urban Legend

I heard it again this week at a lunch with other ministers. One of them was reporting that the church secretary said that all the former minister did was close his office door and pull out an old sermon and say this will preach. Other person said well now all you have to do is download it from the Internet.

Now I will confess that there were a few special services like Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday when I told a story of grace and over the years I was a pastor I told the same story several times at those special services. One year I read an article that Fred Craddock wrote that said congregations like to hear sermons repeated, they can kind of preach along as people sing along with songs they know. "Here comes the good part." So for a six week period during one summer I asked the congregation to tell me some sermons they knew and I would "re-preach" them during those weeks. Most members said they didn't remember any, but a few gave me some titles and we got through the summer.

Professor Tom Long, a widely known preacher in Presbyterian Church who does about 3 guest visits to churches each month, reported to me that he usually took three sermons he had used often and one he was working on to each place where he was doing a guest visitation. So indeed some sermons get preached again. A friend of mine early in my ministry put it this way:"Every sermon that deserves to be preached once, is worthy to be preached again and often. The problem is most sermons do not deserve to be preached the first time. We just preach them because we have to have something to say on Sunday.

But most of the local pastors and preachers I know, and I am in this group, work very hard every week to have something ready for Sunday morning. It is never as good as they hoped. They, and I, never preach it as well as they would want to, and it if it was prepared for this week's people, it is never appropriate for next week's or next year's people without extensive work. It is one of the stereotypes and myths that preachers just have to live with.

National Day of Prayer

Recently a Federal Judge has declared the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. Not being a lawyer or a constitutional scholar I have to leave some of the legal and technical matters to others. But I do have some questions and ramblings on this.

First, I know that we have in lots of communities, we have one in this community, preachers who turns the National Day of Prayer into a Christian evangelical revival. There are three or four scheduled events in different parts of our town, and every one is a full blown testimony to Jesus. So I can understand why it might be possible for a Federal Judge to see the National Day of Prayer as an effort to establish the Christian religion over others. That would be contrary to the law that Congress will make no law to establish one religion over another.

However, the establishing a National Day of Prayer does not necessarily have to establish one religion over another. From what I have read most other religions have a practice of prayer and meditation. Just like Thanksgiving Day declaration does not say one has to go into a Christian church, the proclamations recently that I have read call for people to go into their place of worship and give thanks. A National Day of Prayer is a day on which all people are invited to pray, like AA, to the higher power however they define or identify it. Certainly in these days of heated rhetoric it would be a good idea for all of us to take a moment to remember that neither side is perfect, that neither side is God and has all the answers, and neither side knows what the future brings because the future is in the hands of the mystery of tomorrow. It is not a bad thing to have a National Day of Prayer on which Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Taoists, and all others lift up to the needs and the concerns of this country to the Holy One. Heaven knows, our country's power and pride need some kind of humbling.

Secondly, on a much more general note, it seems to me that we have a very confused and complicated public relationship with religion in our politics. When 9/11 happened nobody declared all those prayer services and worship events to be unconstitutional. When old Presidents die we don't rule their public funeral services to be unconstitutional. When all the candidates say "God Bless America" after all their speeches, no one I have heard files suit.

The old argument against the Ten Commandments in courtrooms always troubled me as well because they were declared offensive as the establishment of one religion over others. The Ten Commandments are part of the tradition of three, at least, major religions. God is not a term that is solely the property of Christianity. We all need to remember that. A National Day of Prayer is not addressed just to Christians.