Where are we? Where is the fear?

What in the world is happening to us? What in the world is happening with faith based communities? What is it that we think we ought to be getting from our religion? What do we think we owe to the Holy?

I suspect that religion has always had a very large dimension of what is in it for us. All kinds of various religious practices have been developed to obtain from God what we want. Fertility, Rain, Prosperity, Peace, Victory, Success, have been but a few of the things we have wanted God to give us. We have made the sacrifices and we have fulfilled the vows in the hopes that our behavior would gain God's blessings.

The religious practices which have been performed to obtain what humans wanted have most often, had a large dimension of fear or apprehension as a part of them. We wanted to get on the good side of the gods because we had a very deep and pervasive fear of the Holy ones. We wanted to do it correctly because the gods had a temper and did not take kindly to shoddy work or carelessness.

From what I read in lots of articles and commentaries by others is that some how the fear has gone out of American Religious practices. We act like the Holy is a buddy. We want God to make us happy, we want happy music and successful programs, and lots of smiling faces, and we do not seem to have much fear that God has any anger or power that might be used destructively. We are chummy with God. We are informal and causal and familiar with the divine. From what I read there has gone missing that dimension of fearful thing to be in the hands of the Almighty.

Frederick Buechner, a well respected religious novelist, wrote in a message called Home, about is conversion experience under the preaching of George Buttrick in New York City. Buechner talks about Buttrick, "These were the days before ministers were supposed to be everybody's great pal and to be called by their first names from the word go, the trouble with which, at least for me, is that it's not another great pal that I go to church looking for,but a prophet and a priest and a pastor. I have never met a warmer, kinder man, we never became pals, for which I was grateful, and if there was anybody in his congregation who called him George, I never happened to hear it."

But the word is that few people want to have a prophet who has words of judgment about a self-indulgent society. Nobody wants to hear a prophet who condemns a nation which spends more on military than it does on health, education, and peace. The word is out that we go to church to be made happy and to have the life we are living blessed.

From what I see and what I read, it does not look like those who go receive any blessings.

A Child is Given

"For unto us a child is given..." is at the heart of what I understand Christmas and the Christian faith to be about. It is about a blessing that is given that we could not demand or make on our own. It is a gift. A gift that we may not be prepared or adequately trained to receive, or we may not even really want when we get it.

The "child" is given by someone or something else. It is not something that we could demand or require or earn. My son and daughter-in-law have given us a grandchild and another one on its way. But we knew early you did not talk to them about "When are you going to have children?" It was their decision and it is a gift to us. Even people seeking adoptions have to have someone who is prepared to "give" them a child.

The "child" is given to us is a reminder that life is a gift to us. Even those who are angry at life and claim they never asked to be born, acknowledge that life is a gift. That what we have is a remarkable gift of amazing variety of blessings and joys. That the best things in life really are gifts to us that are free. As the poet says, "Getting and spending we lay waste the powers that are ours." Christmas focuses on the gift that is given to us, and the gift is all creation, given to all of us, given to us free to enjoy and to share and to give to others.

The "child" is given to us as a free gift. It is to be shared. It is to be celebrated. It is to be valued. It is a gift given to all creation. It is a gift given to all people. It is a gift, and we have to confess that we all have real trouble with receiving and accepting gifts. Somehow so often we think gifts come with strings or obligations or duties. "You have to give a gift to get a gift. You got to give a gift if you got a gift." What kind of gift is that.

Unto us a child is given... and the world is still not really comfortable is just accepting a gift and sharing it with others.

Terrible Two's

We had a wonderful time during Thanksgiving of visiting with our children and sharing some time with our grandson. Our grandson is at that delightful age of two years old. Most of the time he was a pleasant and adorable grandson, but there were a number of occasions when he demonstrated all of the negativity and stubbornness of a two year old. There are good reasons why two year old are called Terrible. During those times when our grandson was terrible, all he could say was “No. No. No. No.”

Upon reflection as I drove home, it seemed to me that we have a lot of terrible two personalities in public life at the moment. Leaders and decision makers who can only say NO. A lot of people in public office who are acting like two year old. They are all negative.

There was a major crisis in our financial markets a few years ago. The possibilities of a second great depression was supposed to be on the horizon if these financial institutions collapsed. The proposals were put forward to try to protect them and to bail them out. There were a lot of people who said No. No. Let them fail. No.

The reports out of Detroit this year are that the major automobile companies are enjoying an increase in sales and are headed towards a record month. The auto industry seems to have found its footing again. But there were a number of public officials who said often and loud NO to the proposal to bail them out.

We have a major, major issue in this country about immigration. We have a lot of people in this country who are illegally here. It is estimated that that number is more than eleven million. When it is suggested that a solution has to be found for that problem. The Farming industries are having a horrible time finding workers to harvest crops. There has to be found a way to deal with this issue, but there are leaders who just say NO. NO. Arrest them. Send them home. NO.

Everybody in the country agrees that the number one issue facing us right now is getting our people back to work. To find jobs for those who are unemployed. When proposals and legislation is presented that would put people to work on bridges, roads, harbors, rail tracks, grids, and lots of infrastructure, the response of lots of our public officials is NO. NO.

Our dependence on foreign oil continues to be a concern, but suggestions and alternative solutions to that dependency are put forward, lots of NO’s come out. When public health talks about the need for a cleaner and healthier environment, the response is NO and many even want to do away with Richard Nixon’s department of Environment. Concern about weather changes and global warming? NO. No. No such thing is happening. When there is recognition that the playing field is tilted in favor of the 1% wealthy in this country and proposals are made to balance that by increasing the taxes on the wealthy and the Fortune 500 companies, the two year old personalities cry NO.No.

The good news for my son and his wife is that my grandson will grow out of his terrible two condition. The only hope for the rest of us is that we can find some more mature people to elect the next time there is an election. The good news for 2012 is that there is an election.

The Playing Field

The Playing Field

Rick Brand

In the lively debate concerning the economic direction of the our country, there has been an awful lot of talking about the value of the “free market” system. I have heard over and over about the wonderful contributions that have been made by our capitalist system. I recently heard President Obama talking about the virtues of the Free Market to the leaders in the Far East.

One of the supposed virtues of capitalism is that it has a level playing field. Newt Gingrich can feel justified in telling the protesters in the Occupy Wall Street Movement to go home and get a job. He seems to believe that they could go home get a job and become part of the 1% of the wealthy. After all it is supposed to be a free market, level playing field on which all people can compete equally for the prize.

But honesty compels us to confess that the market is not a “free market.” Talk to most small business people and the stories I hear are that they are bound and restricted by all kinds of regulations and red tape. There is a beautiful restaurant in downtown Henderson that has never opened because it has not met all the codes. Set backs, required green spaces, sign restrictions, safety requirements and the list goes on. Most of the restrictions and requirements have some value for the good of all of us, but their very presence puts a lie to the “free market” idea.

The notion and concept of “level playing field” is equally betrayed by a looking around. The tax break people get for the interest on home mortgages put an advantage to the home builders. The government wants to encourage home ownership so they give a break to the buyer, but the home builders are benefited. To promote IRA and Retirement funds by giving tax breaks gives a boost to the financial institutions. The building of roads by the government gives a great help to the trucking industry. The Internet was developed by the government and its benefit to IT companies is amazing.

Every decision by government tilts the playing field in one direction or another. Why else would every major industry spend millions of dollars in lobbying Congress? They want Congress to tilt the field in their direction or at least to keep the tilt they already have in their favor. The level playing field, free market, concepts are myths. They do not exist. The playing field is always being tilted and the free market is clogged with restrictions and limitations.

It seems to me that is what the Occupy Movement is all about. They look at the economy facts of life for our society and it is obvious to all who look at the facts that the playing field has been tilted in the favor of the rich for the last twenty years or more. That the free market has not been free, but the marketplace has been much more receptive to big business than to small business. That government and large oil, government and defense contractors, government and financial institutions, government and the auto industry have become so interwoven that government is working for those industries and limiting the small work place.

The market is not free. The playing field is not level. The middle class and the poor are getting oppressed by a system in which the top 10% of the population holds more than 70% of the wealth and the bottom 50% of the population holds only 2% of that wealth. It has not always been this way. The tilt has obvious in the last few years. At one time it was government’s job to try to keep that playing field level. It has quit and has joined with the rich to tilt the field in their favor.

A Right?

The picture in the New and Observers front page (on November 17, 2011) shows students protesting the proposed increase in tuition. They are carrying large banners, sheets with paint on them, proclaiming that "Education is a Right." The slogan has caused me to pause and give thought. Is Education a "right" of every person?

The cost of education has been rising at a much faster rate than the cost of living. The cost of college education has been rising at about 40% over the last decade. The College of Charleston recently announced that it was lowering the cost of education at their school. They said that it made no sense to keep raising the cost and then have to give more and more financial aid.

The high cost of college education has forced a great number of students to leave college with incredible high student debts. So the protest against another increase in tuition certainly has a legitimate place. Education is essential for the new economic realities facing the world. A recent comment was made about Raleigh, that the unemployment rate for college graduates was 4.7%. The unemployment for those who had not finished high school was 18%. Education is a necessity for future employment.

The Declaration of Independence says we have the rights to live, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those "rights" have been given to all people by the creator. There are other gifts that have been given to all citizens by a social contract. One of those rights is the right to vote, and that gift was only gradually given to all citizens. Property owners, men, women, and finally blacks.

When we became a community and entered into a social agreement, again education was not one of them. Education was done by the religious communities and it was given to a select group. Health Care was another service that was limited and given by religious communities. Because the benefits of both education and health care were visible to communities, the whole community agreed that it would be a good thing for all its citizens to be able to benefit from education and health care. Public Education and Public Hospitals were begun.

But the Public Education for all people, the agreement in the community, is only through high school. Public Education at the college and beyond is selective. It is available only for those who meet or exceed the admission standards. There is not an obligation on the party of society to provide college education for all its citizens. At least, I do not remember that statement ever being made. Perhaps the Community College systems with their open door policy seek to offer advanced education to all citizens.

Is Education a Right? Perhaps the six year old has a legitimate argument that education is a right of that child as a result of being a part of the community which has said it was going to provide that service for all children. The College Student?.... I still have trouble with the word right.

One Talent

ONE TALENT

November 13, 2011

Littleton Presbyterian Church

Stanley White Presbyterian Church

Rick Brand, Supply

I think that sometimes the best way to tell what you believe about God and what you believe about life, and what you believe about the purpose of life is to look at what you believe about yourself. What you believe about God and what you believe God did in creation certainly ought to have some bearing on what you believe about yourself.

That is why this story from Matthew is so interesting. This has to be one of the more familiar parables that Jesus told. This story of the talents. It is a simple story, and yet, like most powerful simple things, the more you listen to it and live with it the more complex it becomes. And in one regard, the most perplexing thing to me is: Why is it that Jesus picks on this poor one talent person. Why did Jesus focus all this attention on this one talent person. For no matter where you try to focus the spotlight of this story, in the end the light falls over there on that little man, cowering there before his master offering up his napkin and talent all safe and sound, and then being chewed out royally for his carefulness.

Look at the current story in the world. The focus is all on Joe Paterno. The multi talented, much beloved coach. The high profile guy. The one with all the records. We hardly talk about the janitor who was supposed to have seen the event as well. Our attention in such stories goes to the big names. Our normal attention would be on the five talented person. Steve Jobs, or Rupert Murdoch. So the question will not go away: Why did Jesus pick on this single talented person? Why did Jesus have such harsh criticism for this honest and careful guy? Jesus could have made up the story so that the five talented guy had gotten involved into many hedge funds, over extended like Corzine, the former head of Goldman Sach, the former Governor of New Jersey, at MF Investment and had to file for Bankruptcy. We might have liked that. To see the rich and the powerful get cut down to size, the way some enjoy seeing professional golfers like John Daly hit seven golf balls in a row into the water on the 15th hole. Everybody likes to see the arrogant and the pompous get put in their place by the perfect response. But not here. Jesus picks on this poor little who had so little to begin with.

What makes it even more surprising is that Jesus is usually the champion of the little people. The Gospel stories are constantly showing us that Jesus has a warm spot in his heart for the lost, lonely and wretched. Liberation theology keeps reminding us that the Scriptures have a prejudicial preference for the poor. It is the little, overlooked, outcast individuals who are almost always the heroes of his other stories: the despised Samaritan, the wastrel son in the pigsty, the blind beggar Lazarus, the publican, the harlot with the precious oil for his feet, the widow and the dead son, the woman with the flow of blood. The list could go on, but not here. Why this almost withering scorn for this poor cautious, fearful little man. Remember, this man has legally done nothing wrong. He doesn’t even have the Herman Cain possibility of inappropriate behavior. He has only down what most people did in that day to keep their money safe. He had put it in the ground, like our ancestors did during the Civil War. When asked for it, he did not claim he had lost it, he just brought it forward and gave it back. And yet, Jesus points a condemning finger at him. Why?

Naturally, I can’t speak for Jesus, and so I can not answer my question with authority, but perhaps the more you think about it, the more it appears there indeed may be a connection between Jesus great love and attention to the little people and his great anger and disappointment in this one talented person. Maybe it is precisely because of Jesus’ great and constant concern for the little, apparently unimportant people; Jesus great love for what we so often consider insignificant things in life, like a drink of cold water, a shirt off the back, or a visit to a sick person, a note to a person in prison, that is the reason for his frustration with this little man. Don’t you belittle any of God’s gifts. Don’t you dare call any gift you have worthless.

Because, let’s face, you and I are forever being hypnotized by bigness, by busy and important affairs of the world, with insatiable appetites for size and bigness. Everybody was curious and watched the 20 million dollar wedding of Kim Kardishsian. We have TV programs about the life styles of the rich and famous. We like big, fast, and expensive. Look at the Hummer. We have lists of the Forbes Five Hundred and Ten Best places to live and Ten Best Universities in the World. If it big, fast, smart, rich, and famous, then we automatically give it a higher place of importance than others.

Yet Jesus, in contrast, is forever picking out some insignificant detail and making it the center of the story. Making it of supreme worth. Five loaves and two fishes, one small boy’s lunch, and it feeds 5000. Or the mustard seed that hosts a flock of birds, or the widow’s mite, the lily of the field, the pinch of salt, one peculiar pearl, so that all of this might help us accustom our eyes to the new way of looking at things in the eyes of God, to change for us the notion that lots of talents are necessary for the good life, to educate us that the small and the unique and the ordinary are loaded with possibilities of supreme worth. Jesus is trying to convince us that God is tremendously concerned about little ordinary people with little ordinary gifts. If we believe that God is a God who focuses on the little, then we can believe we matter supremely to God.

And I can imagine that Jesus focuses attention on this little man because Jesus knows that there are peculiar and difficult temptations and dangers awaiting the person with five talents. When you know you are more talented and more gifted than all the people in your class, how do you keep from becoming arrogant and condescending? How do you keep from believing that the standard rules do not apply to you? When you have not experienced failure or disappointment because of your many talents, how do you keep from trying to do more things than you can handle? The five talented person has different challenges than you and I have. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have to worry about how to give away their vast fortunes. Handling hugh amounts of wealth is not easy. That is why those who win the lottery are usually broke in three years. The five talented people do have a different set of obligations, temptations and possibilities than most of us. Jesus understands that the one talented person, people like me, maybe you too, is beset by the peculiar danger of being far too ready to think of ourselves as little worthless people, that we don’t really matter much. Low self-esteem must be a real problem because most school systems have as one of their goals to enhance self-esteem. We so easily convince ourselves that we don’t really make much difference. What is one vote, why vote? We are just another paper pusher in the office, what difference would a couple of blank disk make to the company? The son needs them for his computer. No sense sending in our proxy for the stock holder meeting, it is just thirty shares? My pledge. they don’t need my pledge. It is just a puny thing.

It is this disgusting, cringing, self-debasing, this fear of risking, this fear of death, this fear of inadequacy, this hiding behind the wall of littleness, I think, that ignites Jesus’ ire. Jesus lashes out at him because Jesus just cannot stand to have the people of God pretend to be powerless, to be small, to be inadequate. “Thou wicked and slothful servant.” God is concerned about this man, God has created the earth for his enjoyment and use, God has created him unique and gifted, and this little man stands there cowering, not trusting God even enough to make use of the gift God has given him to us.

The fact of the matter is is that God is pretty good at working wonders with little one talented people who simple have enough faith in God and his power to have some faith in themselves and their own ability to make a contribution. To believe I can’t do everything, I can’t do all things, but I can do one thing, and I will do it as well and as often as I can. And God can make wonders of that faith. List to the roll call of those Saints: Peter, Paul, Luther, James, John, Mother Teresa, CNN will have a whole roll call of Heroes on Thanksgiving night of people who have taken their one passion, their one talent, their one idea and have made incredible contributions to their community. There are little people all over the world, laughing stocks of the world, who are remarkable for only one thing, they did not go cowering along shrugging off their daily opportunities and responsibilities because they had only one talent. They have taken whatever God has placed in their hands, however unpromising it might have appeared to them, trusted God would make something out of it, and God has made something of it. One man in India began a small bank of making micro loans to women and changed the whole economy of his area and won a Noble prize.

So what about us? Me with my one talent, you maybe with your one or maybe two. The spotlight of the story does eventually shift from the past to the present, from that fearful man in the parable and turns its glare on us. Cause if you take the parable seriously and believe the man who told it, all heaven, -- quite literally -- all heaven is breathless at the moment, watching eagerly to see, wondering about what we will do with our one talent. Waiting in suspense to see where we put the talent we have. In a real sense, waiting to see what we believe about God and what our belief in God means about God’s belief in us

Ah, you don’t really believe that do you? We are not really all that important. Look at all the millions and 7 billion people in the world. We are just one person. We are just too insignificant for all of heaven to be concerned about what we do with our little resources. That is exactly what got Jesus so hot and angry in this story. That is what I think this story is all about The Bible suggests that it is lack of faith that is our greatest sin, and the greatest obstacle to faith is this constant message from the powers of death and defeat that we do not matter. That we are accidental collections of atoms that have no real value.

At least that is the way it seems to me as I read this story. Jesus confronts this man and says, “How dare you so discount and demean yourself and my gift to you that you imagine yourself capable of doing nothing. Nobody expects you and me to win an Oscar and write a Pulitzer prize winning novel, and hit 400 during the baseball season and run a fortune five hundred company all at the same time. Not even God expects that of the one talent person, but there is a place where what I have and what you have is needed desperately to bless others and to use it in that place is to bring your own life into full bloom of joy and satisfaction. To God be the glory Great things He can do even with the one talented person.

The Difference of One

I do wish it was easier. In the wake of two major institutions experiencing great damage by failure to deal openly and honestly with child abuse, maybe others will act more appropriately. It should not be a hard decision. It should be a "no brainer". You see evidence of child abuse, animal abuse, sexual abuse, bullying; you report it. It should be automatic, but as we have seen, it is not an easy thing to do. There are just too many temptations to avoid facing all of the ramifications that will come. There is usually the defense that there were only rumors or "I did not know the whole story"; It was "He said - she said" Who do you believe, I did not want to make such a serious charge with so little information.

But once again as with the Roman Catholic Church, we have seen again at Penn State what damage and chaos ignoring it can bring. The lesson has to be learned, "You think reporting it can cause problems?, just look at what not reporting it can do. " Just the pragmatic evaluation of the two options, regardless of the moral and ethical questions, the reporting the abuse immediately costs you less in the long run.

Another obvious lesson to all of us is the tremendous difference one person can make. One person with the courage to report what he had heard could have made all the difference in the world in this case. One person did have the courage to speak about it a little bit, but not enough to report it to the officials. But one phone call from Coach Paterno to the Child Service Agency, one phone from the AD, one phone call to the authorities and this whole matter would have ended differently.

If you are ever tempted to think that one person does not matter, just remember this whole sordid affair and that one person created it and just one person could have put an end to it quickly. The difference in this whole thing is one person. You see it. You report it to your boss, but if the boss does not do anything about it, you report to the authorities. We are our brother's and sister's keepers.

Mean, Mean Spirit in this place

There is a hymn that says there is a sweet, sweet spirit in this place, but as I watch and read the papers, as I listen to the radio and TV, as I surf the blogs and websites, I am more and more depressed by the mean, mean spirit in our place.

There is a mean, mean spirit in the air that attacks Governor Rick Perry, from Texas, for signing a bill that gave illegal immigrants, who had been in public high schools in Texas for three years, the right to enter colleges at in-state tuition fees. The legislature and the Governor simple decided that if they were going to be in his state, it was better to have them educated and productive than to have them uneducated and on the dole. It is a mean, mean spirit to attack that decision. It merely recognizes the reality of the state. Those students are here. The state may either help make them productive or can deal with them as welfare and criminals. For me to say something nice about Governor Perry is a great concession on my part.

The mean, mean spirit in Alabama that has driven so many of the illegal immigrants out of the state is costing the farmers and agricultural industry a great deal of trouble because the farmers are not finding enough workers, the workers they find do not work nearly as hard, do not harvest nearly as much, do not come back for the second day, and take more breaks.

There is a mean, mean spirit in our country that just will not look that problem straight in the eyes and attempt to find a comprehensive national solution. Ex President Bush made a very good proposal and President Obama took that proposal and offered it again, and nobody in Congress would touch it.

The mean, mean spirit in this land seems to be manifested in most of our major issues. The mean, mean spirit cannot find public leaders who can work to find a compromise. The mean, mean spirit can be found in Occupy and Tea Party rallies. The mean, mean, uncompromising spirit is seen in the NBA lock out. The mean, mean spirit is hear in the rhetoric about amendments for banning same sex marriages. The mean, mean spirit is visible in the complete callous and insensitive actions of Wall Street bankers, hedge fund, mortgage lenders who continue to want and demand their bonuses for practices which created the sub-prime crisis.

The mean, mean spirit, that refusal to compromise, that refusal to look at the reality in front of us and seek to find a solution killed the Bowles-Simpson Deficit Commissions Report before the ink even dried on the published page.

Barbara Tuchman, a historian in the 60's, had a book about the March of Folly. People, societies, which continued to follow and do the wrong thing even when there were wise and sane counsel that advised them not to. Like King George and the American colonies in our own independence. There were lots of advisers in England urging King George to reduce taxes, but he refused to listen. It is the mean, mean spirit in our land that somehow keeps our leaders from listening to the wisdom, from facing the real problems and fixing them, of making the kind of responsible decisions that need to be made.

And I am afraid it will be a long time before we as a nation will be able to sing about the "sweet sweet spirit in this place."

It is a Sin. So What

I have a friend who posted the observation that "Class Warfare is rooted in envy, and envy is one of the seven classic sins." I am not sure exactly why that observation was made except that it was made in response to all of the Occupy Movements that are being called part of a class warfare that Obama is supposed to be starting.

Somehow it seems rather unproductive to call those engaged in the Occupy Movement sinners. So what? We are all sinners. The discussion has not made any progress to call those demonstrators sins. I have no way of knowing if their reasons for being at Wall Street is envy or not, but I understand that they are sinners. That is the first statement one can make about everybody according to the Christian faith.

The second part of a debate about the existence of sin in this debate is that my friend tried to down play the existence of sin in the free market capitalistic system. One does not engage in that discussion of free market capitalism very long before one hits greed, selfishness, gluttony, lust, and envy itself as one hedge fund operator is envious of the success of another. The problem is that there is no such thing in this country as "free market." Every law and every decision of government promotes one side and prohibits another. So to attempt to make those waging the Occupy movement the bad guys because their movement is based on envy does not seem to me to be productive. At best all you have is sinners on both sides of the war.

There are a number of issues which seem to me to make the statement that the class warfare is based on envy an oversimplification. There are recent articles which report that the wealth of the richest 1% in the country has risen at three times faster than the wealth of the middle class and the poor. That suggests to me that the whole system is rigged. That any suggestion that there is a level playing field is simply a lie. The field is tilted towards the wealth. That is not envy that is a demand for fairness.

There is the issue that still smolders in the hearts of many is that those bankers and finance people who did not do their duty and were negligent in rating and research that helped to create the subprime mortgage crisis have not had to suffer any penalty or punishment. That those companies were bailed out by the government and then those bankers and financial officers still wanted their bonuses provides another incentive to demand some kind of justice.

When the Republicans keep saying the taxes are too high on the rich, that business needs more tax cuts, when the Republicans refuse to raise the tax rate on this 1% that is getting fatter and fatter every year so that these 1%ers do not even pay taxes at the same rate as their secretaries that does not generate envy, that generates hostility and anger at the absurdity of it all. Those people at Wall Street don't envy what the rich have. Those people only want a decent life for themselves and their family and they see it being stolen by the rich by the system in which the tilted in favor of the 1%.

To say that class warfare is based on envy is a cheap shot at those protesting the reality in which they live.

Lessons from this Seasons

With all of the discussion every year about the lessons people learn from sports, this year's season of baseball is a good teacher. While colleges talk about all of the good things that can be learned from playing sports, and then turn around and show us all the bad things that can be learned from too much money and too little concern about education, professional baseball this year has provide, I think, at least two clear lessons.

The stories coming out of the Boston Red Sox's locker room tell us one very clear lesson. You can pay players too much. When they get so much money and so many years guaranteed they stop performing and they become complacence. The Oakland Raiders had a quarterback from LSU that they paid too much money to and he never saw the need to work hard or to take seriously the organization's advice. Yes, you can pay a player too much and he will lose the passion to perform well.

Along the same lines is the lesson from the teams in the Division play offs and the World Series. Money will not buy you a championship. The payroll of the teams in the League championship series and the World Series have pay rolls that rank between the 10th to the 17th on the list of highest payrolls in the major leagues. Obviously you need to pay your players fairly, but just because you go out and hire and pay the largest payroll in the sport does not insure that you will win the championship. The LA Lakers also discovered the same thing. Most expensive payrolls do not insure a championship.

You can play a player too much. No matter how much you pay for your line up, it does not guarantee you a winner.

Same Old Same Old

One of the very first people I visited in my very first job in 1968 was an elderly woman who said she could not ever vote for Richard Nixon. She remembered his hateful actions as a congressman. She jokingly said that was the trouble with old age, you remember too much.

I thought of that when I started hearing all the concern about the Mormon religion of two of the candidates for the Republican nomination for President. I don't claim to remember too much, but I do remember all of the worry, fears, and bigotry that was expressed over John Kennedy's Roman Catholic faith. A minister named Herb Meza in Houston, Texas was Chair of the Houston Ministerial Association and had Senator Kennedy address that issue and the issue seemed to diminish.

John Kennedy became President and his Roman Catholic religion did not seem to bother him as President. At least not according to the rumors of all his romantic affairs. In fact, as I think back, there are very few Presidents who seem to give any evidence that their religious faith has made much difference in what they did. Jimmy Carter is about the only President I remember who seemed to take very seriously his religious convictions and if truth be told, he had a very difficult time being President.

It does not take a long memory to remember that religion was a major aspect of the Obama struggle to be President. He keeps claiming to be Christian and his enemies keep claiming he is a Muslim. There was a lot of discussion about the "brand" of Christianity he followed if he was a Jeremiah Wright follower. But the nation elected Obama and one can hardly say that his religious convictions have "ruined" the country.

Now there is just as much ignorance and fear over two Mormons who are running for President. The great "we can't have a President who is a Mormon. They believe all kinds of strange things and are not Christian. They are a cult." cry has gone up. The reality is that those men have been elected to various leadership roles and those states, companies, and offices have not been destroyed by having Mormon leaders.

Why do we keep having the same debate over and over? A long time ago an organizer told a group of us the only legitimate standard to judge a politician was by whether or not he has kept his promises to the public. Look to the record. What did he say. What did he do. The Politician who promises one thing and does not attempt to do what he says should not be trusted. The Politician who promises the public something and tries to do them deserves to be trusted. To their credit many of the Republicans elected in 2010 have been trying to keep the promises they made when they ran. Thus it is easier to decide if they should be reelected because we know they will try to do what they said. The only other question is whether we like what they promise.

I would much rather have a devout, faithful Hindu who speaks quietly, makes one or two promises and tries to keep them, than to have a Bible Thumping Christian who says he wants to impose his religious convictions on the whole society and yet does nothing. But we do not need to have a religious orthodoxy standard for our Presidential candidates. We have been through that too many times before.

Not an end to it

One of the House of Representatives of North Carolina said that he voted to put the amendment to ban same sex unions on the ballot in the form of a constitutional amendment in order to put this question to rest "once and for all." The only trouble is that this amendment which is called Defense of Marriage may ultimately work in the opposite direction.

This amendment which bans same sex unions will make the repeal of it very difficult. Once it passes it will be very hard to overturn it. So what will be left for those who are homosexuals to do? What will be there next target? It is obvious to me that they will not disappear from society if this amendment passes. They will not stop loving and seeking relationships. So what will be the next thing that they can target?

As part of a religious denomination which has just recently changed its requirements after about thirty years of debate to allow congregations and governing bodies to ordain and install homosexuals in positions of leadership. The denomination refused to do this for more than thirty years but the homosexuals did not go away or stop their struggle. They did not go away. They did not stop fighting for the opportunity to serve the church. Neither will they stop seeking to have their relationships recognized.

So I suspect that if this amendment passes and same sex unions are banned by constitutional amendment then only visible target for them will be to seek to change the definition of marriage in the state law. Currently state law says that marriage is between a man and a woman. So now if same sex unions were permitted those unions would not be marriage and marriage is protected. If this amendment passes, the easiest target would be in the legislature to redefine marriage to allow it to be the union between two loving people regardless of sexual orientation. That redefinition would be much easier than rescinding a constitutional amendment.

So what is now being proposed as a defense of marriage may very likely force the gay community to target the redefinition of marriage. What is suppose to protect will in the end change marriage. Funny how things turn out.

Public Prayers? Whose Name?

At the last City Council meeting in my home town, there was a large debate about the nature of the opening prayers that are said at the Council meetings. At the County Commissioners public hearing concerning zoning the meeting was opened with prayer and it concluded in "Jesus' name, Amen." The Chair of the County Commissioners commented on what a wonderful prayer had just been offered. These comments came about because there have been a number of issues raised in the courts and by the ACLU about the legality of public prayers that are religiously identifiable.

The prayer that become exclusively Christian in its content has been declared inappropriate in some courts recently. Our leaders felt the necessity to bear witness to their faith by declaring that they would continue to open our public meetings with prayers "in Jesus' name."

It is true that the Old Testament has lots of public events where the meetings are opened with public prayer. There are a host of prayers given by King Solomon at the opening of the Temple in I Kings 8. Of course, the King was considered a servant of God and had a religious obligation in the Old Testament. So public prayers to God are abundantly present in the Old Testament. But none of them conclude with "in Jesus' Name" and none of them that I know of end with Amen. If we were to follow the Old Testament examples of prayer in public the Jews and the Muslims could probably tolerate those prayers well.

When we as Christians move into the New Testament and try to learn what Jesus says about prayer, one of the first things we read is that Jesus is not a very big fan of public prayers in the first place. He tells his disciples to go into a closet to pray. Don't pray like those other people on the street corner and in public. Do your praying in private. So I guess the first thing we would have to say is that if we took Jesus' advice seriously we would not have prayers in all these public activities like City Council meetings, Football games, and Chamber dinners. So avoid public prayers and making a show of prayers. Jesus would certainly want to urge us to be a lot briefer than a lot of people are.

Now if we continue listening to Jesus in the New Testament there is his instruction to his disciples as to how to pray. He gives them the prayer we call the Lord's Prayer. In none of the Bibles I have does that prayer end "in Jesus' name we pray." As it is now said by people, it just ends with, " forever and ever, Amen." In fact, different traditions of Christians have different endings to the prayer. At least in theory, that Prayer to Our Father, could be shared by Jews and Muslims alike. So it we were to pray like Jesus taught his disciples we would not have to add that "in Jesus' name" conclusion.

There are the passages which talk about Jesus telling his disciples that whatever they ask in his name, that will be done. But it could be suggested that Jesus is talking to his disciples as a group and that what they ask as "the church" will be done. That might suggest that asking in Jesus' name in a public meeting where it is not automatically obvious that all are disciples that asking in his name is not warranted.

I am among those who believes in the power of prayer and the call to obedience and faithful witness to one's faith, but it does not seem to me that we are witnesses to the graciousness of God and the loving kindness of our Lord when we are offensive, insulting, insensitive and dogmatic in our behavior. "O Holy One, come into this room and bring wisdom and the courage to do what wisdom shows us to do. Amen" That prayer would get it done for me.

Defense of Marriage?

The Republican majority in the state legislature have passed a bill putting on the state ballot in May, 2012 the question of a new amendment to our state constitution. They have called the amendment the Defense of Marriage amendment. Yet the amendment has very little to do with defending and strengthening marriage. It is aimed primarily at preventing same sex unions and partnerships.

The referendum will add nothing to the definition of marriage which the state of North Carolina has already defined by law as the union of one man and one woman. So by law already, whatever same sex couples do it will not be a marriage. The referendum will move to prevent same sex unions or legal partnerships.

It is a shame that the referendum that will be voted on is called Defense of Marriage Bill and yet has nothing in it to defend or strengthen marriages. Because, heaven knows, marriage as an institution does need all the help it can get. We do need to do something to make marriages more stable and more respected. The figures suggest that more than half of the marriages that take place end in divorce. That is a tragic statistic. We need to do something to help strengthen and assist marriages to last.

Marriage as an institution is being attacked. We have lots of young couples who live together without the legal protection and security of marriage. We have more and more older adults who are now being reported as living as if they were married, but not actually getting married because of the legal complications of estates, income, pension benefits, and health care obligations. We have lots of unwed mothers in our country. Marriage needs help. Pat Robertson has just recently attacked marriage by suggesting that a spouse might divorce a partner if the partner has Alzheimer’s.

Why did not the legislature actually pass a referendum that did Defended Marriage? Certainly seems to me that they could have put in the referendum a limit to the number of divorces a person could have. Nothing weakens the image of marriage more than somebody having six or seven marriages as if they were short-term rentals. Would not it strengthen marriages if you limited everybody to just one divorce? There are a number of sociologists who would say that you could strengthen marriages if you did not let anybody under twenty five get married. Let them live together or date or do whatever, but do not let them marry until they have grown up a little and matured in their choices. I am sure that they could have thought up some other better ways to strengthen marriages.

Banning same sex unions will have absolutely no affect on what happens in heterosexual marriages.

Same Sex marriage?

The Republican dominated legislature has finally managed to put a "same sex union ban" on the ballot as a constitutional amendment. What a shame. This will be a very divisive debate and at the end there will be very little gained by the results one way or the other. If the amendment passes we will be no further along than we are right now as marriage is already defined as between one man and one woman by law in N.C. and so marriage will not be enhanced. If it fails we will have a large number of people who will see our society sinking further into chaos.

As someone once remarked, "With more than half of the heterosexual marriages ending in divorce, with more and more elderly living in heterosexual relationships without marriage licenses, with so many unwed mothers in our society already, with domestic abuse all around us, just how in the world does same sex unions erode the respect for the institution of marriage?" In fact that same person wondered why homosexuals even wanted to get married with all the bad things associated with marriage. Allowing same sex unions will have no impact on the quality of heterosexual marriage.

A large number of people believe that they are defending the Biblical definition of marriage. There are two major places where the Bible speaks of "one man and one woman" There is a passage that says a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife. (Let it be noted that it does not say he can only cleave to one wife.) The thrust of the passage is that the man and woman create their own place and do not put the interest of their parents ahead of their own family. There is a passage of advice that leaders should be husbands of only one wife.

But when you read the whole Bible it does not seem to have a consistent definition of marriage or family. Abraham and the patriarchs had several wives and servant concubines. The Kings of Israel and Judah have listed harems and lots of wives. Saul, David, and Solomon had bunches of wives. Jesus himself is not reported to have had any wives, but he had lots of female friends. Paul, it has been argued by some scholars, had a wife but apparently was never home to care for her.

The desire to establish and impose the narrow definition of marriage from the Bible as one man one woman is an attempt to continue the imposition of the Christian world view on our rapidly emerging multicultural society. There are other cultures where more than one wife is expected. There are different ways to organize society. Certainly we can organize our society the way we think it is best but there ought to be great principles involved in what we do.

The principle of justice and human rights in its broadest understanding would not attempt to prevent same sex unions. Marriage is still one man and one woman, but there are people, human beings, who are homosexuals. How they got that way may be a long debate itself, but they exist. They have desires, feelings, and rights that all humans have in our society. They ought to be able to form unions, to share homes, to have children, to have the same benefits in health care, inheritance, and respect that other people have.

We did not need this amendment. We do not need this debate which is being forced upon us now. We do not need to pass this amendment, and if this amendment passes it will be a great step backwards for our "common good."

Our Story

There is a story in the New Testament. The story is a great story, but it causes more reaction than most stories in the Bible. It is a story Jesus tells about a farmer who needed some day laborers. The farmer goes to town early in the morning and picks up a truck load of workers. When the farmer hires them they all agree before they get to the farm to work for the wages he offers. He offers to pay them a full day's pay for a full day's work. Every body is happy. But the farmer sees that there is a lot more work than the people he hired can do, so he goes to town and picks up another load of workers. About half way into the afternoon, he begins to really worry that the work will not be finished by the end of the day. He rushes in and picks up another load of workers. We have no explanation as to why these workers were still unemployed at that hour.

When it comes time to pay, the farmer calls those hired last out to the pay desk first. The farmer and these workers had never talked about pay. The farmer pays these last to the job workers the full day's pay. Now naturally, those hired first start to think that they will be paid more because they worked more. When they are called they get paid what they had agreed to work for. They get a full day's pay for the full day's work.

As you well know, they were not happy. They start to complain. The farmer asks, "How did I cheat you? Did I not pay you what you agreed to? Did I not pay you a fair wage for your work? Why are you so upset by my kindness to the others?"

What strikes me so amazing is that we in this country get so outraged by that story and it seems to me that it is our story. America is the late come workers. We are only two hundred years old, but we have more than half of the world's wealth. We are the workers who have been abundantly compensated for our work in the world. Compensated far more than so many who have worked so much more, longer and harder. We are the people who have been given so much more than we have earned, and yet we have this amazing outrage when we read about some farm hands being helped by this farmer. If it is the lack of fairness that troubles us, (it is not fair to pay the last workers the same,) then it is not fair for this country to have the great abundance of wealth that we have at the expense of all the other nations who have been working in the vineyards of the earth for far longer, far harder, and for a lot less.

Perhaps that is the reason we dislike the story so much. It is too close to home.

God and the Monument

It was on the Huffington Post that I saw the report. It seems that the Pat Robertson of the Christian evangelical persuasion has suggested that the earthquake that caused some cracks in the Washington Monument was an act of God to tell us that He was displeased with us as a country. The reason for God's displeasure was abortion, same sex marriages, multiculturalism, and a host of other things that Pat considers a sin.

But the fun thing would be to see how many other interpretations that could be given to those cracks in the monument. We will start with the given that Pat starts with: that the Washington Monument is a symbol of the power and "moral uprightness" of this country. But it might also be argued that those cracks are God's displeasure over the way Congress and the leaders have refused to cooperate and to solve the multitude of problems that confront this country. Those cracks might be God's frustration with the partisanship that prevents any significant action to be taken on the host of major problems facing the country.

A little different take on those cracks could be God's displeasure on the Republicans for their attacks and abuses of the poor, the old, the vets, the college students, the middle class, as the cuts in the budget deal are almost all directed at the small portion of the budget that deals with social services and educational assistance.

We could come at these cracks another way if we were so disposed. The excitement and build up of attention on the Martin Luther King, Jr. monument might be the reason members of the KKK would give for God's displeasure with us. With a black president and a monument to a black leader, the KKK's God would surely want to put his foot down. Send a message.

There might be a case made by the Wall Street Hedge Fund managers that the reason for God's displeasure is this talk about higher taxes on the rich and raising the tax rate on Capital gains. Wall Street's God would not be happy to see bonuses dipping and higher taxes.

No one could fail to acknowledge the case made by the construction industry that the cracks in the monument represent a failure of proper maintenance and repair of vital infrastructure in this country. The God of Construction wanted to point out that our bridges, our subway systems, our harbors, our runways, our water and sewer systems are all getting older and are in need of repairs and replacements. Cracks in the Washington Monument might get our attention to repair things now.

Well, so many options. Too many interpretations and possibilities. But I am sure that the readers have their own. I would love to hear them.

It is not a Joke

Several couples were sitting around a table and one of the men said he had a great joke. Seems there was this elderly man in Florida who decided to get him a hot sports car. He drove it off the lot and went out on the Interstate to test it out. He hit 80, 90, and was pushing 100, when he saw a Highway Patrol officer with flashing lights. The old man immediately sped up and tried to get away. 110, 120, and then he said to himself, “What am I doing? This is crazy.” So he slowed down and pulled over. The Highway Patrol officer walked up to the car. Pushed his goggles up on his helmet, and said to the old man. It is Friday afternoon. I go off duty in ten minutes. If you can give me a reason that I have not heard before as to why you were speeding, I will let you go. The old man said, Well you see, five years ago my wife ran off with a State Highway Patrol officer, and for a moment there, I thought you were bringing her back.” The Troop pulled down his goggles, turned and walked away, and said, Have a good day.

Everybody enjoyed the story, but the wife of the man who told it. So the man says, It was a joke. It was just a joke. I was not making any comment about marriage or women. It was a joke. Lighten up.

That is often how we try to take the sting out of rude or insulting remarks. It is a joke. We were just joking around. That is what Dr. William Barclay, the famous Biblical Scholar, and Dr.W.C. Allen, who wrote the scholarly International Critical Commentary on Matthew, said about Jesus harsh words to the Canaanite woman. Jesus said,"I can't take the food that was meant for the children, and throw it to the dogs." He called her a dog. Barclay and Allen both say that Jesus must have had a smile on his face, a twinkle in his eye, and a laughter in his voice.

Well, I think Jesus meant it. I think that Jesus was saying that there is a limit to God's love. He could not take the bread of life that the Jewish had been waiting for for centuries and give it to people who just came around and wanted something. Jesus says there is a limit to the grace of God. We cannot give Democracy to countries that have no preparation for it. We cannot give home ownership to homeless people and have it work out. Jesus says you cannot give the kingdom of God to people who do not know what the Kingdom is.

The woman did not seem to be insulted. She just tells Jesus that there are other people who are not the promise children who have been waiting, looking, hoping, and praying for the coming of God. Others like dogs under the table are also waiting for the blessings of God.

There is a limit to God's ability to give his love and grace. God cannot give forgiveness to anybody who does not believe he has done anything that needs forgiveness. God cannot give hope to people who think they have all that they need. God cannot give reconciliation to families that refuse to talk about the pain and suffering and conflict in their family. They would rather live with the pain than mention it and do something about it. Jesus cannot be a savior to people who do not want to be saved. Jesus was not joking when he told the woman that he could not give her the children's bread. But she amazed him with her responds and he says, "Whoa, woman is faith is great. You got what you have been hoping for, and the child was healed. God can only give us the gifts He has when we come to the place where we know we cannot give ourselves what we need.

WAGE GAP IS A SIN

About ten or fifteen years ago The Presbytery of New Hope in eastern North Carolina had an overture they sent to the General Assembly. The overture they sent was to ask that the PCUSA committee on investments initiate stock holder resolutions to establish that the salaries of the CEO would not be more than 200 times the average salaries of the non managerial staff. The Presbytery included in that resolution the idea that all compensation for the CEO be included in that figure. The idea was that the top person, with all the perks and privileges, should not make more than 200 times the average of all the secretaries, janitors, maintenance workers and other non-management people. For every dollar of increase in that figure, the CEO could get 200 dollars. The Presbytery believed that the wealth ought to be shared with those who did the work.

That was a rather radical idea as the gap between the CEO and the non-management people at the time was larger. The CEO's of the largest companies in the country were being paid 411 times the average. At the time the gap between the CEO's in this country was larger than the gap in any European country.

The Resolution went to a committee at the General Assembly and the investment committee representatives said they were already talking to companies about that issue and we did not need to pass that overture. The Presbytery's overture was answered in the negative.

So it was with sorrow that I read the Washington Post article that reported that "When it comes to wage inequality, the U.S. ranks alongside developing countries. " Our gap is a little smaller than the gab between CEO's and the non-management people in Uganda and Jamaica, but our gap is bigger than even the Cameroon and the Ivory Coast. (Their article did not use numbers)

It is not just the hedge fund managers who are afflicted with greed. It is in all of us, and the work of all of us is to control the greed of each other. That is the beauty of joint and shared power. The group is supposed to restrain my greed, and I work with others to restrain the greed of others. When the compensation committees of these large corporations are made up of other CEO's nobody is restraining any body's greed.

Workers have to share in the profits of the corporation just as much as the stock holders. It is not Socialism or Communism which tells us that the workers must be paid fairly. There are very strong and prosperous companies who have some limits on CEO salaries and who keep the ratio in check. I think it is Christian Justice for all of us to push for a reasonable ratio. What we have now is just sinful.

Sounds so Good

The other day I was listening to some old Jimmy Buffet cassettes. I have lots of them and I still have machines that can play them. Jimmy Buffet's music and lyrics have always fascinated me because his songs make a lot of references to faith, theology, the church, and humanity. He has a song about a young man who went to Paris looking for answers to the big questions of life and how life itself gets in the way of the search. There is a song about "What if the Hooky-Pooky's really what it is all about?" "God don't own a car. " There is his classic song about confession of sin, Margaritaville. He begins where we usually begin. Denial, "It's nobody's fault." Then he ponders some more and say "It may be my fault" and then he finally gets to an honest confession, "It's my own damn fault." That is a pretty good description of how most of us come to our confessions.

The song that caught my attention this time was an old song about "Who's going to steal the peanut butter?" It sounds like a group of college kids who have no money go into a Penny Mart and get what they need for supper, and they have this routine worked out. This is how they get food on a regular basis. Jimmy gives what can only be considered as classic justification for their stealing. It is the human desire not to acknowledge that we are doing anything wrong. The convict who wrote about In the Sanctuary of Outcasts, Neil White, who was convicted of check kiting, says he did nothing wrong. He did not steal any money. Check kiting was just a way to buy a little time. Jimmy and his friends have wonderful reasons why taking the peanut butter was not doing anything bad. "We only took what we could eat. There was plenty more on the shelf, and we all swore if we ever got rich, we would pay the Penny Mart back."

They were hungry. They only took what they needed. It was not like they were extravagant or wasteful. They did not take it like vandals who tear up stuff and just make a mess. They did not take a carton and throw it in the creek. They had a hunger, survival was at stake here. They needed food so they took peanut butter. That is a good line of defense. Of course, no one knows what they did with the money their parents gave them for food, or why they did not have food in their apartment. But it was hunger's fault. They had to have something to eat.

There were plenty more on the shelf. They did not deprive anybody else of peanut butter. It was not like somebody else would have to go hungry if they took this jar. The store had lots of jars. What difference did that one little jar make. There were so many jars. I think I feel something of that temptation every time I am in WalMart. There are so many plastic lawn chairs. there are so many footballs, there are so many color TV's; there are so many dresses, shoes, so many of everything. why don't they just give everybody one. There seems to be enough for everybody to have one. I can understand the thought. I never take any, but I do see how you could justify your thief by saying, "Well, they will never miss. Nobody will be deprived of one. they got so many." There are plenty more on the shelf.

And we are not really stealing. We are just borrowing. This jar is on loan. When we get rich we will pay the Penny Mart back. This is not stealing. We are getting it on credit. Charge it and we will pay when we get rich. Makes it all sound so nice and friendly. This is not a serious major problem for all retailers. This is just a little transaction that we will check up on in ten or twenty years. One has to wonder now that Jimmy Buffer is so rich how much he has paid the Penny Mart.

Jimmy and his friends could easily and quickly find a rationale to justify and make sound okay the stealing of peanut butter. The human heart can do that for most of our crimes and evils. Just listen to the way we explain why we go to wars. "Weapons of mass destruction"

Just listen to the way Wall Street defends its greed. Just listen to the way we rationalize our attitudes towards sex and marriage. We are as quick and as easy finding our rationales for our sins as Jimmy was for his. It is a human characteristic.

400 Years of the KJV

This year is the 400th anniversary of the printing of the King James Version of the Bible. Like so many other things in like there are the good things and there are the sad things to say about that version of the Bible.

There are the good things to be said about the KJV. It was a universally accepted version of the Bible for a very long time. The language and the writing were of such high quality that it encouraged literacy among all classes of people. The KJV was such a well done piece that many of the phrases and cliches of today are phrases right out of the translation. It shaped the way we talk and think. So many of the passages of scripture have become absolute traditions. In one place I worked, I read the Christmas narrative from a new translation and I was told in no uncertain terms that on Christmas eve the story had to be read from the King James Virgin. They wanted to hear that Mary and Joseph and the Baby were lying in the manager. Even if it was a crowded manager that is the way they wanted to hear the story.

Of course, that is also part of the bad results of 400 years of reading the scriptures from the same version. It has been familiar. The stories have no impact because we have heard them so often in the same way. And we have been told that familiarity breeds contempt. We have heard the stories so often in the same words that we dismiss them as old hat and outdated. That too is part of the down side. The language is dated and there are claims that younger people do not understand and do not know what many of the words mean.

One of the down sides of 400 years is that many people have heard the exact same words that they begin to believe that those are the very words of Jesus. My mother taught Latin in High School in Johnson City, Tenn. The state was engaged in a big debate as to whether or not to have devotions in school. So my mother decided to have her classes read the devotions every day from the Vulgate Bible. The Latin translation of the Bible. She said if they made a fuss she could always say it was her subject matter. Well, somebody made a fuss, but it was because she was using the Latin, and this parent wanted her child to read the Bible the way that Jesus said it. The way it was in the King James Version.

There are lots of other translations and paraphrases of the Bible available now. It is a great discipline and blessing to a person to read the Bible in a different version every year. Read it in a foreign language if you know one. The constant variety of translations help us to remember that the message is the important thing. The fundamentalist claim to a Bible that contains the very words of Jesus or God is a myth.

The King James Version has been a great blessing. It is one of the versions I would encourage everyone to read, but there are a lot of other versions now that help one get closer to the message and hope in the Scriptures.

It Does It For Me

We are all wonderfully and fitfully made creatures. Biology has never been an enemy of faith for me. The more I learn about how amazingly complex human bodies are, how incredibly complex every creature is, how fascinatingly mountains and river systems are, the more I accept the notion of an all wise creator. As some one suggested, "To believe that this amazing universe happened by chance from a big explosion is as believable as to believe that the Encyclopedia Britannica would be printed by an explosion in a print shop."

We humans are so amazing and so diverse. I think that is what makes People Watching one of the great activities for so many people. You can sit in the Mall and just be amazed at the differences in people. Tall, fat, lopsided, big ears, big hair, lots of tattoos, bushy eyebrows, and on and on, with no two looking the same.

Because we are so different it is not a surprise that we all have different ways of finding and responding to the Holy Deep, to the Mysterium Tremendous, to God, to the Wholly Other, to the Ultimate. Some people are touched by magnificent music. Some people want to sit in silence and be alone with the Alone. Some people become awaken by one of the special gifts of humans. Someone sent me a piece about the incredible gift of colors. We would see and some do live in black and white. Life would be possible without colors, but they are a great gift of joy and beauty. I remember a man who prayed and gave thanks for the taste of food because we would eat to survive even if food had no taste. But boy are we glad that foods taste different

One of the places that is constantly reminds me of the wonder of creation and forces me out of the temptation to narrow and make God small is the annual trip to the Beach. The Ocean has a way of reminding me about the vastness of creation and life. One of my first amazements was how in the world can we human people create enough garage to pollute that vast ocean. It looks so huge. The Ocean and the power of the waves drives home a lesson about how small and insignificant I am. The steady beat of the waves reminds me of what G.K. Chesterton said about God and our powers. Chesterton said when we play with our children and toss them up and they laugh and cry "Do it again!" We do it again until we become exhausted and have to stop. God does not get tired. Each day, Chesterton suggested, God says to the Sun, Do it again. And I think he says to the waves, Do it again. Do it again. Do it again.

Each of us is different and have our own places and our own times for meditation and worship. These private moments have to be brought to the community and shared at some point or we can drift into heresies and private religions. But the Ocean is always a good place for me to get a perspective on life. To jump start my theology. It does it for me.

Question to measure your faith journey

Evaluation is always good. Every program and activity needs to have a means by which it determines its progress. Usually in the church the two major criteria are money and members. Did the giving increase and did you have more members seem to be the easiest and most common criteria for measuring the faithful journey of a church.

But I would like to suggest five other questions which I think are more appropriate to ask about our life together in faith.

a. Has your attendance at church, has the worship where you go, have the materials you have been using for your devotional life, pushed you deeper into the mystery, the wonder and the majesty of God? Has that journey into the deeper wonder, amazement and holiness of God created as many questions for you as it has given you answers. God is the one in the Scripture that so often asks tough questions instead of giving simple answers. In Genesis God asks,"Where is your brother?" He asks Job, " Where were you when I created Leviathan?" The deeper we move into the love, forgiveness and mercy of God, the more our categories of justice and fairness disappear, leaving only questions.

b. Has you faithfulness in religious devotion given you a new freedom from all the petty little rules that life keeps trying to make us follow. "A man's indifference to minor matter is the measure of his real faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior." The more you find your life sustained and rooted in the wonder of Jesus Christ the less concerned and bound you are to all the little gods of life, like race, family, country, economics, and power. Jesus had a remarkable freedom from all of the laws the Sadducees and Pharisees kept want to bind him with. He met with a Samaritan woman at mid-day, he enjoyed children, he ate lunch with Zaccheus; he ate with sinners, he let a prostitute bath his feet with perfume. Our growth in Christ ought to be moving us more and more into a freedom from all other little petty gods and their rules

c. Has your participation in worship and your own devotional life expanded the circle of your compassion? If you are more and more coming closer and closer to God, are you sharing more and more of his love for all creation? Are you praying now for more people than you prayed for five years ago? If the love of God is moving through you more and more, are you sharing his love for more and more of his creation?

d. As that love of God for all creation begins to dominate your life and your vision of life, do you find yourself a little more able to consider the possibility that some of those "other people" just may be able to be forgiven by God? As you get carried along by the power of the Holy Spirit are you finding more tolerance for other people? more able to think of excuses and explanations for their sins in the same way you think of them for you own sins?

e. The last is a money question, but it is not whether your church has more, but whether or not you have discovered that you are more generous with what you have now that you were four years ago? Do you trust more that God's blessings will continue and that you can be more responsive and more generous with what you have? As we become rooted in the greatness of God, we become confident that God will bring fresh blessings new every morning and we don't have to hoard or grab more blessings than we need. There is no dying with the most toys in the Kingdom of God. A living and vibrant faith should be helping to make us more generous towards those who need our help.

These are some questions I would use to tell if the places I have been going and then things I have been doing as a disciple are really helping me move in the direction of God's love.

Whose Calendar?

Tomorrow will be Father's Day in the USA. For most children it presents a problem because they have no idea what to get their father, and they probably don't have enough money to get anything he wants that he does not have. I always felt badly about birthdays and Father's Day because I had already bought myself anything I wanted that was under $25.00. I also knew that they did not have even that much usually to buy me something. So Father's Day was a problem. It is a problem for lots of other people as well because some of us fathers are not very nice people, and some children do not even get to know their fathers.

But Father's Day, Mother's Day, 4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Valentine Day, and the list goes on are a problem for the faithful preacher and his congregation. How much do you let the civil calendar influence the life and teachings of the Christian community? How much authority do you give to the civil, commercial, and popular culture to determine the agenda of the worship experience of the People of God?

One of the very first meetings of a Commission on Ministry I attended as a new member of Presbytery was a real shocker to me. An older minister made the statement that he never found preaching very hard. He summarized it quickly: New Years - talk about new beginnings, Valentine Day - love, Spring - new life; Mother's Day - Mothers; Father's day - Fathers, 4th of July - loyalty; Labor Day - hard work. And he said you just have to say nice things about all of them and people love it.

And somehow the fact that he had never even come close to anything in the Bible or dealt with the question of sin, the necessity of forgiveness, the need for grace, the mystery of the Divine, the reality of doubt, the questions of why is there something and not nothing, what is the meaning of life, where do we go when we die, and the list goes on. He was happy. It was easy. The Congregation, he said, was happy, so what was the problem?

It was the adoption of the liturgical calendar and the lectionary in Presbyterian circles to try to combat the older gentleman's preaching program. It was an effort to substitute the calendar of the Church for the commercial calendar of the culture. So it is interesting in some places to hear and read the cry coming from younger preachers that we need to get away from the lectionary and become "more relevant" in our preaching. Which for them means more along the lines of the cultural calendar.

I can only speak for myself, but the congregation and the preacher who spends time talking about the dates on the secular calendar is a congregation and preacher I would stay away from. We are called to be in the world, but not of it. What better way to be "not of it" than to have our own agenda and our own calendar which moves to a whole different time frame?

NO EVIDENCE FOR IT

As I understand the Republican economy philosophy which they practiced under Reagan and Bush and would like to keep or increase, the idea is that you cut taxes on corporations and businesses, that would give them more profits and they would invest in new technology, they would hire new people, they would produce more products. You cut taxes on capital gains, dividends and the income of the wealth so that they would have more to invest in businesses, they would have more to buy more big ticket items, and they would hire more people to help them. That is how I have understood the philosophy. Give the rich people who are supposed to be the wiser and more productive members of society, as judged by their success in making money, and they will stimulate the economy.

The problems is that I do not see any evidence that it has worked as designed. How can you cut taxes to corporations when the 400 largest corporations in this country do not currently pay taxes? How can you claim that cutting taxes to businesses will create more jobs

when we were losing 700,000 jobs a month when President Bush left office? How can you can claim that these large corporations and businesses will benefit the country when the major financial institutions nearly destroyed the country with their speculations?

There is even less evidence that tax cuts for the very rich are invested in society and by that investment enrich the community. Trickle down was supposed to mean that the rich would get tax cuts and they would invest and the rest of society would be lifted up by the increased economic activity. The evidence, recognized by all sides, is that in the last ten to twenty years the rich have simply gotten richer, obtained and kept more and more of the wealth and the middle and lower classes have gotten poorer. The middle class is disappearing. We seem to be moving towards a 1 or 2 percent of the populations having 98% of the wealth of thee country and the 98% of the people living with 2% of the wealth. The way trickle down economy has always been presented this is not supposed to be the results.

The evidence does not seem to support the idea that making the rich richer will make the poor richer as well. It is a failed idea. It is an idea that is not consistent with the philosophy of democracy with its concern for all people to share the benefits equally. It is an economic theory that is contrary to most religious traditions of concern for all people and especially the needy and the poor. It is certainly not fulfilling the call for a shared economic sacrifice in these rough times. As a people we can do better than this.