A neighboring pastor asked the question on Facebook. He wanted some help in making plans for the coming September. He has been holding a weekly Bible Study at his church and he asked for suggestions. On his Facebook site he got a lot of help, but there was a strange consistency. Nobody suggested any books of the Bible. This was to be a Bible Study group and the pastor wanted suggestions on which book of the Bible might be interesting to a group, and all the suggestions were things other than the Bible.
There were lots of good suggestions. There was a suggestion about a study of the seven major sins. That is a good series. We did that in my previous congregation for Lent. It was a good program and it was a helpful discussion about the attitudes and desires of sin, and not the specific acts that are sins. There were good suggestions about a number of popular books that would make a good study. Still coming are suggestions like Purpose Driven Life, The Shack, the Prayer of Jabez, and others. Nothing wrong with these books. I knew a pastor who had a Wednesday morning round table discussion group that read all kinds of things. But this was a request for Bible Study, and he got no suggestions.
There is a great concern among most of the religious leaders that I read about the lack of Biblical knowledge in the congregations. Teachers of preachers tell students that they will have to do more explaining of the Biblical story when they want to use the Bible because most people in the congregation will not be familiar with the Biblical stories. Sunday School Classes seem to find other things to teach besides the Biblical stories. Of course, one notices that lots of preachers do not even use the Bible as the text of their sermons any more.
The lack of suggestions for good Biblical studies in response to that inquiry is just another clue as to why nobody knows the Bible. When those pastors had Bible studies, they did not study the Bible.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Main Thing
Being a male and being one who has enjoyed sports, I do think there are lessons that are available and valuable for those who play them. I have often heard it said that one learns about team work, one learns about hard work, and one learns how to handle losses. Those are good lessons to learn, but the lesson I have been thinking about because of two parables in the New Testament is the lesson about the main thing. There is a story about the man who finds a treasurer in a field and goes, sells all he has and buys the field. There is another story about a man who collects pearls but when he finds this one amazing pearl, he sells all his other pearls and buys this one great pearl.
The lesson of the main things is that so many little things have to be sacrificed for the main thing. It is a lesson that applies to all great arts and endeavours but perhaps it is seen by more in the pursuit of Championships. To achieve the great goal means that lots of little pleasures, activities, entertainments, and hobbies have to be forsaken. The main thing demands our full attention. The main thing also directs us to lots of other activities.
Certainly one of the moral evils in our society today is that we are encouraged to try to have it all, to sacrifice the main thing for lots of little things. Our advertisements keep promoting thousands of little things: hair removal devices, nose hair cutters, thousands of different ways to cook a sandwich, little bungee chords to hold paint cans to ladders, and on and on. So much stuff, so many things that we lose sight of the main thing.
Perhaps that is why so often you hear about people needing to find themselves or to get their acts together. They suddenly realize that they have become so fragmented that they have no main thing and no center. Could it be that that is why the Westminster Confess begins with exactly that question, "What is the chief end of Man?" None of the little things are necessarily evil in and of themselves. But when they keep us from ever finding our main thing they loose "anarchy upon the land"(Yeats) and cause waste in our own lives.
The lesson of the main things is that so many little things have to be sacrificed for the main thing. It is a lesson that applies to all great arts and endeavours but perhaps it is seen by more in the pursuit of Championships. To achieve the great goal means that lots of little pleasures, activities, entertainments, and hobbies have to be forsaken. The main thing demands our full attention. The main thing also directs us to lots of other activities.
Certainly one of the moral evils in our society today is that we are encouraged to try to have it all, to sacrifice the main thing for lots of little things. Our advertisements keep promoting thousands of little things: hair removal devices, nose hair cutters, thousands of different ways to cook a sandwich, little bungee chords to hold paint cans to ladders, and on and on. So much stuff, so many things that we lose sight of the main thing.
Perhaps that is why so often you hear about people needing to find themselves or to get their acts together. They suddenly realize that they have become so fragmented that they have no main thing and no center. Could it be that that is why the Westminster Confess begins with exactly that question, "What is the chief end of Man?" None of the little things are necessarily evil in and of themselves. But when they keep us from ever finding our main thing they loose "anarchy upon the land"(Yeats) and cause waste in our own lives.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Pressures
Jimmy Buffet has a line in a song about something being "another example of love in decline." This is another example of the difficult choices that life presses in on people. I have been attending clinics to become qualified to officiate volleyball games on the High School level or lower. The Booking Agents have been repeating over and over that they will not use, and no booking agent is supposed to use, officials who are not qualified. The first requirement is to be registered with the state high school association. The official position is that no unregistered official may work any games. Unregistered equals unqualified.
But here is a region that is covered by a booking agent who has about seventy to eighty high schools in his region. These are the large high schools with strong programs and they want four officials at each game. But there are not that many registered officials withing his agency. The booking agent is always on the hunt for new officials, but the deadline is passed for registration for this year. The state test has been given and is not repeated until next year. The schools want their games officiated. The booking agent feels the pressure to find officials. The temptation to use unregistered officials becomes very great.
The other part of the story is that there were four deaths in sporting events last year. One of those deaths happened in a contest in which an unregistered official was working. There is no public information that the unregistered official did anything to contribute to the death of the athlete. But in the great emotional upheaval of the parents, the fact that an unregistered official was working that game will be a significant part of the wrongful death action brought against the school, the state association, the booking agent, and the official.
The pressure to use whoever is available versus the reason why such officials ought not to be used. We human beings live in a complicated and complex world of choices and demands. It is so easy to sit back and pompously declare what should and should not be done. But in the ebb and flow of our lives the choices are much harder and the "rightness" becomes less absolute. Certainly there are situations on the far ends of the spectrum which can be resolved quickly and easily, but I think most of our lives are in the middle in mess and we try to do the best we can. It is also why we need forgiveness for we frequently discover that we have made choices that were not helpful, wise or good. Like the booking agent, trying to provide officials so that high schools could play, who sent that unregistered official and now finds that there is this horrible mess.
But here is a region that is covered by a booking agent who has about seventy to eighty high schools in his region. These are the large high schools with strong programs and they want four officials at each game. But there are not that many registered officials withing his agency. The booking agent is always on the hunt for new officials, but the deadline is passed for registration for this year. The state test has been given and is not repeated until next year. The schools want their games officiated. The booking agent feels the pressure to find officials. The temptation to use unregistered officials becomes very great.
The other part of the story is that there were four deaths in sporting events last year. One of those deaths happened in a contest in which an unregistered official was working. There is no public information that the unregistered official did anything to contribute to the death of the athlete. But in the great emotional upheaval of the parents, the fact that an unregistered official was working that game will be a significant part of the wrongful death action brought against the school, the state association, the booking agent, and the official.
The pressure to use whoever is available versus the reason why such officials ought not to be used. We human beings live in a complicated and complex world of choices and demands. It is so easy to sit back and pompously declare what should and should not be done. But in the ebb and flow of our lives the choices are much harder and the "rightness" becomes less absolute. Certainly there are situations on the far ends of the spectrum which can be resolved quickly and easily, but I think most of our lives are in the middle in mess and we try to do the best we can. It is also why we need forgiveness for we frequently discover that we have made choices that were not helpful, wise or good. Like the booking agent, trying to provide officials so that high schools could play, who sent that unregistered official and now finds that there is this horrible mess.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
location, location, location
Real Estate people say those are the only rules of good real estate: location, location, location. No matter what the building or the business, if it is in the wrong location, it will not succeed. Since I know nothing about real estate, I will have to accept that as accurate. What worries me in so many people I know in the community in which I live is that the location has become a limitation to them.
They grow up, they have friends, they find a survival job and they let that become the world for them. It is amazing how many people in the community in which I live have never been out of the county, much less the state. They have never seen the ocean. They have never seen the mountains. They have never seen great rivers or ten lane highways. Television is no substitute for going.
Two stories were told recently to me. One was a young woman who had grown up in Wilmington and went to college in Boone, NC. She lasted less than a semester. She went home because it was too cold and there were no places to shop. Her location had become a limitation. She could not see the advantages and the opportunities of a new place. The second story is almost identical A young woman got a full scholarship to college. All expenses paid. College was not something her family could have given her. She did not last more than a week. She had to come home. The home location had become a limitation.
Another group of people have taken off for a mission trip. The place they are going is not one that normally comes to mind as a place that is desperately in need of mission work. The kind of work they will do in a week is not particularly impressive. But they are going. There has never been for me much evidence that mission trips did much good for anybody but the people who go on them.
The major benefit of mission trips is that it has a way of expanding our locations. In small ways it begins to get you to thinking that the focus of your Christian service is not limited to the boundaries of your city limits. It introduces you to other Christian people in other parts of the country or world which links you to the world wide community of the Christian faith. Mission trips help us discover just how hard it is to really help other people regardless of location. The ministry of helping is not as easy as we would like to think. Mission trips go because we want to be obedient to our Lord. Jesus says "Go into all the world..."
There is always much that may be done in the location where we are. We will all have to pick a location for our ministries because we cannot minister everywhere. But to allow the location to become a prison from which you cannot escape is to miss out on the wonderful mysteries and blessings that God has created all around the world. It is a magnificent world and part of being faithful to the Creator is to enjoy as much of it as one is given the opportunity to enjoy.
They grow up, they have friends, they find a survival job and they let that become the world for them. It is amazing how many people in the community in which I live have never been out of the county, much less the state. They have never seen the ocean. They have never seen the mountains. They have never seen great rivers or ten lane highways. Television is no substitute for going.
Two stories were told recently to me. One was a young woman who had grown up in Wilmington and went to college in Boone, NC. She lasted less than a semester. She went home because it was too cold and there were no places to shop. Her location had become a limitation. She could not see the advantages and the opportunities of a new place. The second story is almost identical A young woman got a full scholarship to college. All expenses paid. College was not something her family could have given her. She did not last more than a week. She had to come home. The home location had become a limitation.
Another group of people have taken off for a mission trip. The place they are going is not one that normally comes to mind as a place that is desperately in need of mission work. The kind of work they will do in a week is not particularly impressive. But they are going. There has never been for me much evidence that mission trips did much good for anybody but the people who go on them.
The major benefit of mission trips is that it has a way of expanding our locations. In small ways it begins to get you to thinking that the focus of your Christian service is not limited to the boundaries of your city limits. It introduces you to other Christian people in other parts of the country or world which links you to the world wide community of the Christian faith. Mission trips help us discover just how hard it is to really help other people regardless of location. The ministry of helping is not as easy as we would like to think. Mission trips go because we want to be obedient to our Lord. Jesus says "Go into all the world..."
There is always much that may be done in the location where we are. We will all have to pick a location for our ministries because we cannot minister everywhere. But to allow the location to become a prison from which you cannot escape is to miss out on the wonderful mysteries and blessings that God has created all around the world. It is a magnificent world and part of being faithful to the Creator is to enjoy as much of it as one is given the opportunity to enjoy.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Public Deaths
I do remember the emotional response of the country when John F. Kennedy was shot. But at the same time it seems to me that as a culture and as a society there has been a significant shift in the way that death is handled in public. When I was coming through high school and college, and there was a death of a student or a young person, there were no grief counselors who came to school. We did not have assemblies to talk about the youth. It was never mentioned, but I am guessing that administration people thought that if you had problems, you would see your own spiritual adviser, your minister, or your family.
I also do not remember the now common tradition of creating shrines in various places. Those who mourn now bring to the spot of the accident or go to the home or stand by the locker and fill it with flowers, pictures, candles and other mementos. The public gatherings at those sites and shared sorrows and emotions is certainly different from a wake in a person's home.
I have no way of knowing if one way is better than another. I am not making any judgments about the changes that I think I see. I am only observing that it seems to me that the way we handle death is different now.
The emotional response to John F. Kennedy was one thing. The public weeping for Princess Di was a bit of a surprise to me. The long death watch for the Pope and all the masses gathered seemed a bit more appropriate considering the character of the man and his position. But the public response to Michael Jackson's death continues to be an example of what I think is the change we have made in our response to death. We are creating and developing new public liturgies and rituals for the handling of death and grief because either the old ones do not work now or because society no longer knows about them. There have to be liturgies to handle the great emotional events in our lives, and it certainly appears to me that our liturgy for handling death is changing.
I also do not remember the now common tradition of creating shrines in various places. Those who mourn now bring to the spot of the accident or go to the home or stand by the locker and fill it with flowers, pictures, candles and other mementos. The public gatherings at those sites and shared sorrows and emotions is certainly different from a wake in a person's home.
I have no way of knowing if one way is better than another. I am not making any judgments about the changes that I think I see. I am only observing that it seems to me that the way we handle death is different now.
The emotional response to John F. Kennedy was one thing. The public weeping for Princess Di was a bit of a surprise to me. The long death watch for the Pope and all the masses gathered seemed a bit more appropriate considering the character of the man and his position. But the public response to Michael Jackson's death continues to be an example of what I think is the change we have made in our response to death. We are creating and developing new public liturgies and rituals for the handling of death and grief because either the old ones do not work now or because society no longer knows about them. There have to be liturgies to handle the great emotional events in our lives, and it certainly appears to me that our liturgy for handling death is changing.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Amazing
I am not really convinced that it is something new. Garrison Keilor once suggested that people have an amazing ability to ignore what they do not want to see. I am suspect he is very accurate with that comment. What has brought it to my awareness is the resumption of the debate between Conservatives and Liberals.
Here we have just had one of the largest and most difficult crisis in the financial systems of this country and there is lots of talk about how to fix the problems. On the one side I hear from the Conservative side that we need to leave it to private enterprise. "Government Control is Socialism. Government has never been able to run anything well. Do you want your finances run like Amtrak or the Post Office?" We need to get government out of it. The same argument is made about the auto industry. The government is trying to take over the auto industry and run the whole show. We need to leave it to private business. So the argument goes.
But the facts seem to me to be that it is private business which got us into this mess. Wasn't it private banks, real estate brokers, and all manner of creative unregulated financial people who created this mess? Wasn't it the Board of Directors of these auto industries who managed their companies into problems?
The facts just never seem to make any difference in the debates. The Liberals never acknowledge the facts against their arguments either. There seems to me to be enough facts that the more programs you develop to help those in poverty the more people we have in poverty. And we have been funding major social programs for ages and the numbers never decline. Every N.C. governor has wanted to be the Education Governor and the improvement never seems to match the investments.
I do not have any solutions to all these problems but I suspect that we might make a lot more progress on the issues if both sides would allow the facts to affect their theory. I do not see the facts that say Tax Cuts produce jobs. We just finished eight years of Bush cuts and somehow we ended up with a major economic collapse. The facts seem to suggest that it will be a lot harder to close Guantanamo than the liberals thought.
It is an amazing thing to me how we can continue to hold to our pet theories and ignore the facts that ought to make us consider that we need to somehow adapt or change or modify what we want.
Here we have just had one of the largest and most difficult crisis in the financial systems of this country and there is lots of talk about how to fix the problems. On the one side I hear from the Conservative side that we need to leave it to private enterprise. "Government Control is Socialism. Government has never been able to run anything well. Do you want your finances run like Amtrak or the Post Office?" We need to get government out of it. The same argument is made about the auto industry. The government is trying to take over the auto industry and run the whole show. We need to leave it to private business. So the argument goes.
But the facts seem to me to be that it is private business which got us into this mess. Wasn't it private banks, real estate brokers, and all manner of creative unregulated financial people who created this mess? Wasn't it the Board of Directors of these auto industries who managed their companies into problems?
The facts just never seem to make any difference in the debates. The Liberals never acknowledge the facts against their arguments either. There seems to me to be enough facts that the more programs you develop to help those in poverty the more people we have in poverty. And we have been funding major social programs for ages and the numbers never decline. Every N.C. governor has wanted to be the Education Governor and the improvement never seems to match the investments.
I do not have any solutions to all these problems but I suspect that we might make a lot more progress on the issues if both sides would allow the facts to affect their theory. I do not see the facts that say Tax Cuts produce jobs. We just finished eight years of Bush cuts and somehow we ended up with a major economic collapse. The facts seem to suggest that it will be a lot harder to close Guantanamo than the liberals thought.
It is an amazing thing to me how we can continue to hold to our pet theories and ignore the facts that ought to make us consider that we need to somehow adapt or change or modify what we want.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The Resistance to Grace
I think it is what got him killed. All this talk about grace, about forgiveness, about the amazing equality of God's love for all people. I think that is what got Jesus killed. As I was taught "grace" is defined as "an unmerited goodness." We have a lot of conversations about "what happens when bad things happen to good people" but I seldom hear conversations about grace which is "when good things happen to bad people."
As human beings in our culture we just have a horrible time with the idea that we are sinners. The evidence continues to come in that evil can be found in every home and in each person, but we just keep right on believing that we are nice, good people. Naturally, if we are good people, we deserve good things. So the whole concept of there being something good given to us that we do not deserve does not register. How many ads on t.v. and radio have you heard that says you need to get the "vacation" you "deserve," or that you get the body you deserve, or that you need the kind of legal defense that you are entitled to? I hear them all the time.
The corollary to our notion that we are good, nice, worthy people who deserve what we have is that there are a lot of others who are not like us. They are unworthy. They are the evil ones. They deserve to be punished. They deserve to be restricted and controlled. Thus to be told that they are going to be given the same gifts of acceptance and forgiveness seems to be an outrageous statement. How dare someone put "them" in the same group with "us." And the demand that we are supposed to want in our ethics for them the same gifts of forgiveness, acceptance, and love is just too absurd.
The gift of grace to us is not needed and offensive because it insinuates that we are not worthy of it. We want we what deserve. The gift of grace to others is so offensive because how dare God give to them what he is giving to us. It is no wonder that the preaching of grace and God's love and forgiveness never seems to attract a very large or sustained crowd. Yet it is the sweet sweet blessing to all who come to some profound crisis in life and see themselves as they really are. "O wretched man, that I am, who can deliver me from the power of darkness?" and there is a word that grace has already been offered to those who are ready to receive it.
As human beings in our culture we just have a horrible time with the idea that we are sinners. The evidence continues to come in that evil can be found in every home and in each person, but we just keep right on believing that we are nice, good people. Naturally, if we are good people, we deserve good things. So the whole concept of there being something good given to us that we do not deserve does not register. How many ads on t.v. and radio have you heard that says you need to get the "vacation" you "deserve," or that you get the body you deserve, or that you need the kind of legal defense that you are entitled to? I hear them all the time.
The corollary to our notion that we are good, nice, worthy people who deserve what we have is that there are a lot of others who are not like us. They are unworthy. They are the evil ones. They deserve to be punished. They deserve to be restricted and controlled. Thus to be told that they are going to be given the same gifts of acceptance and forgiveness seems to be an outrageous statement. How dare someone put "them" in the same group with "us." And the demand that we are supposed to want in our ethics for them the same gifts of forgiveness, acceptance, and love is just too absurd.
The gift of grace to us is not needed and offensive because it insinuates that we are not worthy of it. We want we what deserve. The gift of grace to others is so offensive because how dare God give to them what he is giving to us. It is no wonder that the preaching of grace and God's love and forgiveness never seems to attract a very large or sustained crowd. Yet it is the sweet sweet blessing to all who come to some profound crisis in life and see themselves as they really are. "O wretched man, that I am, who can deliver me from the power of darkness?" and there is a word that grace has already been offered to those who are ready to receive it.
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