For a Helmet, Hope

Link to first post in this series.

Friends, I really like to put well-thought-out ideas out here, and I'm afraid I can't really deliver these days. There's too much going on. Way too much. But, this Postmodernism stuff is still burning a hole in my pockets so let me put some quick summary guesses out here.

All attempts to stop Postmodernism's "erosion" of our inspired religion are both doomed and misguided. Christianity is not postmodern, but it's not anti-postmodern either. Postmodernism is an informed way of reacting to the world in which we live. Some people are doing Postmodernism in a very ugly way, but others are doing it with utmost sincerity - just the way we did Modernism and Romanticism in our time.

Postmodernism is an accurate reaction to the horrors of a fallen world when the Information Age forces us all to face those horrors honestly.

The question before the house is how Christians react to hardcore reality. For reasons I hope I've already given, we can no longer hide behind "It'll all be worth it in heaven," or "God is ordering everything for the good." Both those statements are true, but we have to face up to facts. Things aren't good now, and Jesus didn't come selling heaven. Jesus meets people where they are, not where we'd like them to be. We need to know how Jesus meets us now.

Over the past 4000 years, there've been many, many times and many, many prominent verses. Luther gave us, "the just shall live by faith." The fundamentalists brought, "The Word was with God and the Word was God," into new focus. I'd like to suggest the verse for our time is, "Jesus wept."

The urge of every youth movement is to assume no one who came before them was as passionate, caring, concerned, informed, intelligent, spiritual, persuaded, committed, or somehow just didn't get it. I know I made that mistake in spades, but I can't do it again. Now that I'm 46, I need to grab hold of "Jesus wept," but to do so without letting go of any of the other words that have come before. "Jesus wept" informs "The just shall live by faith" and "The Word was God." It doesn't replace them; it defines them.

The just live by faith in a Man Who weeps with them. The Word Who is God includes stanzas of mourning.

Jesus didn't weep when He heard His friend Lazarus was dying, nor after he'd died. He didn't weep when He explained to Martha the theology of death, resurrection, and life. He wept when Mary fell on the ground and asked Him why He'd not come sooner. He wept, just like we do, when the pain touched Him. The pain touched Almighty God in Flesh when the tears of those He loved were wept to Him.

Jesus is touched by those things that touch us.

I look out at all the disasters and pain in the world, in my church, and in my family and I'm crushed. I could as soon save those I love as win three tennis matches all at the same time. I might win or lose any one match if I practice and train, but this life shoots too many balls at us. It's hopeless.

Jesus weeps.

I don't know how to make Jesus weeping sync-up with God ever-blessed. I don't know the theological magic it takes to reconcile the God Who declares He brings disaster with the God Who weeps when the disaster strikes, but Jesus is YHWH in flesh and YHWH wept with Mary.

All of which brings us, finally, to the heart of the matter. I've come to believe Postmodernism is a failure of hope. A Christian Postmodernist can muster the faith to believe in Christ and the love to give his lif to God, but he can't hope being a Christian will make any difference. He reads God's promises and hears God declare them yeah and amen, but they don't seem to work in real life. A Christian's life looks an awful lot like a non-Christian's life, minus the sleeping in on Sunday.

Christianity makes sense when Jesus raises Lazarus, but I want Him to raise every Lazarus and He doesn't. He raised one man to make one point at one time. He raised Lazarus to show us Whom He was, but Lazarus died again a few years later and Jesus didn't raise Him again. There are Lazarus's all over this place whom Jesus doesn't raise, and that makes no sense. I'm so happy with Jesus I could bust, but then I'm a Modernist with a deep well of irrational hope from which to draw. What do I tell my children? Where's the hope? What's the hope?

(For this, I have to thank my wife. I flat didn't see where to go next, but she found it.)

Heb 5:7 While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could deliver him out of death. And God heard his prayers because of his reverence for God.

Jesus wept again before He died. He wept strongly and prayed ... hard ... for fear of personal suffering. Jesus even understood fully why He would suffer. It didn't help. Knowing "why" didn't end the tears. Jesus even had the assurance God heard His prayers. He had every benefit we imagine might make our suffering tolerable, and He wept all the same. He died all the same. And so must we.

I would like to hear whether any Postmodernists can find some hope there. Jesus wept for us and He wept for Himself, but the evil still came. He prayed and God answered by delivering Him over to His enemies, but the story didn't end there. A couple days later God delivered Jesus. He delivered Him from death, from shame, from tears. Jesus is not just the Firstborn from the dead, but Firstborn from tears. Jesus wept, but weeps no more, and He will deliver us from our tears. Jesus earned the power to dry our eyes.

Jesus' death has not yet removed evil from this world, but He told us it wouldn't for a while. We weep when pain comes to those we love and we weep when pain comes to us and we pass through the valley, just like our Lord did.

We answer pain with hope, hope founded on the victory of our Forerunner, Jesus the Annointed. His victory was not over pain but through it, and ours will be too. He promised it would be that way, and we need to grab hold of His example.

To do that, I might recommend we grab hold of an example of Americans who've done this before, beautifully and brilliantly. America's slaves learned to hurt and hope through pain, injustice, grief, and unanswered prayers. They composed songs that called out every pain honestly to the Lord and waited on Him for a deliverance they could only expect after death. I suspect the best answer to Postmodernism is going to sound a lot like a negro spiritual.

On this July 4th we'll celebrate our freedom, but maybe we really need to celebrate the hope of some who lived an American Nightmare.

Hope: Where We All Fail

(Link to first post in this series)

I keep struggling to understand the mystery of Postmodernism. My kids see the world in a radically different way than do I. Radically. Where I keep trying to perceive a coherent tapestry in the confusing threads of pain and joy entangling me, my kids observe, "We're screwed." They think in biological, gritty terms of despair like that, when I never could. I keep seeing hope and they keep seeing reality. It's disconcerting.

I think I've found a clue, though, where we're both wrong.

I saw it first in my younger friends. Paul said God left us with Faith, Hope, and Love. My friends are capable of believing unbelievable things and you can count on them for love. They just can't hope. They can hope for little things; jobs, friends, families. Ask them, though, whether God's goodness can redeem and they'll kind of freeze. Whether they parrot or reject the party line, it seems the comfort of real hope will elude them.

Postmodernism is cobbled together from a thousand little bricks of despair.

Modernists, aka the good guys, look nothing like that. Modernists rest unfailingly in richest hope. Modernists know God is going to make sure everthing works out for the good. Modernists know we're learning more about everything every day, and we're growing stronger, smarter, spirity-er.

Modernists, I'm coming to see, fail by resting on unfounded hope.

We really looked at the Western World's steady progress from benighted medievalism to rationalism to the capstones of democracy and freedom, and ascribe that progress to divine intervention. God was on our side. We're rich and brilliant, aren't we? God must be blessing us. We hooked our faith to the wagon of progress and urged the horses to give it all they had.

When the West ascended to lofty heights we saw the hand of God. We even called it "Manifest Destiny." It was obvious to anyone with eyes in their head that God was going to get us to wherever we needed to be.



Us Modernists have kids, though, who don't think so much of the emperor's new clothes. All that hope in which us Modernists invested smells to them like so many fish tales. We all know what happened to our economy when the Housing Bubble burst, but Modernism inflated a Hope Bubble that couldn't last. Our hope was leveraged out of proportion both to the reality of God's promises and to the realities we live with on the ground.

The answer to both Modernism's hyper-inflation of hope and Postmodernism's recessionary deflation of hope is a correct valuation of what God has promised and what He's delivered. The false overpromises of Modernism won't work any more, but the hopeless fears of Postmodernism won't work either. There's a valid comfort in God's promises rightly valued, and we need that comfort to survive. Even after the bubble a house is really worth the land its on, the materials of which it's constructed, and the neighborhood into which it's joined. The only value the housing collapse stole is the speculative worth it might have had upon resale.

Even so, the Christian life has measurable worth. The relationship it gives to God and people, the growth we experience in the Spirit, and the strength the unified love of His people embodies are true and lasting riches. The false promises of a recipe to make America great, end divorce, and free the subjected people of the world are gone, but the value of knowing God hasn't shaken at all.

Jesus eased the lives of many for the three years of His ministry, but not of all. Health and wealth did not radiate from Jesus in 30 AD into all the corners of Africa, South America, and Asia. He touched the Jewish lives He touched and was content to be limited in that way.

The church today has the same powers and limitations. We can make a difference in our community, and if we do we'll have done what our King could do.

I'll be back to look at this from another perspective.

All Odd Postmodernists are Primed

(First post in series)

It's an old joke, really, but I'm going to make a point from it anyway. Sorry.

How a mathematician, physicist and an engineer prove that all odd numbers, (greater than 2), are prime.

• Mathematician: "Well, 3 is prime, 5 is prime and 7 is prime so, by induction all odds are prime."


• Physicist: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 isn't prime, (bad data point), 11 is prime, and so is 13, so all odds are prime."


• Engineer: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 11 is prime 13 is prime, so all odds are prime."

I think maybe it's a good thing aspiring theologians aren't told by their professors that God said all odd numbers are prime and then asked to prove it. I suspect their proofs might look a little bit like this:

• Calvinist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is ... Who art thou that repliest against God!


• Arminian: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, Christ's atonement sufficed for 9, but 9 didn't heed the call of prevenient math.


• Pentacostal: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, Oh! Hallelujah oh Lord! We praise you for the mystery of 9. Your ways are glorious and the sight of your glory ... la! la! holelulalalaleboo!


• Fundamentalist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 was good enough for Paul, and it's good enough for you! Repent sinner, or face the judgment with factors for 9 that the Bible, the HOLY Bible, testifies against!


• Ecumenicist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not a doctrine over which to divide. Sure, some say it has factors, but division over oddness brings tears to the heart of God. Where some would divide we must add, and even multiply! Instead of factoring 9, let it be a factor. ... Ummm. We don't know what to do with 81, but 81's clearly a non-essential.
  


• Postmodernist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, ... Ummm. 9's not prime. Ummm. Neither are 15, 21, 25, 27 .... Hey! Who made up all this garbage!?!
  
  


• Calvinist, Arminian, Pentacostal, Fundamentalist, and Ecumenicist in concert: Off with their heads!!!
  

I'm beginning to really feel the plight of the Postmodernist. When the Modernists (and all denominations and non-denominations over 40 years old are modernist) answered the questions of the atheists, higher critics, and apostates of 50 years ago, their answers were merely human. They had the divine revelation in front of them, but they were humans working to parse it out. Their answers had gaps.

Then came the information explosion.

My children heard about God's sovereignty from me. Then they heard about the burning of Falun Gong members in China, the genocide in Rwanda (perpetrated by Christians on Christians), the plight of Muslims in Palestine, the deaths of aborted babies by the millions, the fall of Christian leaders, the weirdness of the bible and how no one can agree on what it should say much less what any of it means, the fact that history is written by the winners, and that everyone who holds power is corrupt.

They are bombarded with information every day that says a sovereign God is either a figment of some oldster's imagination or He's pathetic.

To which Modernists reply, "God has a wonderful plan for your life. You are separated from Him by your sin...."

God has been mocked before. He's been rejected before. He's been forgotten, disproven, and declared dead. Today, He's being called out on His record. The Internet has catapulted "The Problem of Evil" (Theodicy) straight at the heavens and not bothered to wait for an answer. Every evil in the world, and every failing of Christianity in the face of those evils, is published to anyone who cares to subscribe.

Faith seems almost impossible with a high pressure pipeline spewing (honest) bad news into each of our minds, but the church's answers seem stuck in the 1950's. So many churches just keep asserting 9 is prime. God is sovereign. This world is the best of all possible worlds under the loving care of a loving God. God has a wonderful plan for your life.

I can hardly blame my children for rejecting my apparent naivette.

Time has expired for the evening, but the skepticism of Postmodernism seems very honest to me. I don't blame them for digging their heels in and wondering where the real answers are hiding.

Accepting The Challenge of Jesus

NT Wright, in The Challenge of Jesus, continues to turn my thinking about real life inside out. And he does it in the best way, by splattering my thinking about Jesus.

The first six chapters of the book are a studied attempt to show wrest Jesus from the shaky throne He holds in our minds. Wright doesn't capitalize "He" when using pronouns to reference our Lord, and that's true of the whole book. Wright de-capitalizes Jesus, and unearths an uncomfortably alien Man in the process. Jesus is not a Western man, and we all know that. Many authors fill in Jewish details about Jesus. Wright goes further. Jesus is also not a universal man . Jesus is wholly Jewish. He wouldn't have connected with Postmodern American folk any better than Peter or Paul.

Six chapters of unwrapping what it means to this American to follow a Man (for the record, it will be a while before I quit capitalizing pronouns referencing the divine Man) with limitations more than covers the price of admission for this book. Wright tied my mind in knots as I slowly unwrapped the implications of the kingdom of heaven being Jewish, the sacraments of Christianity being substantive, the crucifixion in light of zealot history, and so much more. Each layer Wright peeled away cleared my mind, and somehow buried all my mental housekeeping. The book left me with years of rebuilding to do.

I don't want to talk about those six chapters. I need to talk about them, but time doesn't permit me to do everything I need to do. I want to think out loud about the last two chapters.

Wright closes this book with a good old-fashioned challenge.

Wright takes a long, hard look at today's mental landscape and acknowledges the valuable contribution of Postmodernism to humanity. The words "valuable" and "postmodern" have never cohabitated in a single sentence of mine before. I'm so Modernist I still believe stories should have happy endings and villians should be punished. Wright looks at Postmodernism and finds the value in their rejection of all things certain. He finds accuracy in their depiction of the fall, in their assessment of its reach, in their ultimate hopelessness facing the world that really is.

Frankly, I'm as unhinged by the frank revelation of the foundational hopelessness of my children and their peers as I am by Wright's reconstruction of Jesus. To say I'm Modernist is to say I still hope "it can all be fixed." I foundationally assume anything wrong can be put to rights and we're all together in trying to find the best way to do it. My children know better. They know we're all screwed, and no one else really even gets anyone else's pain, much less is working together to fix everything. (I wanted to use another word than "screwed" back there, but there's no synonym. It means bad things were done to us that left us crippled, but it doesn't quite mean we're doomed. And crippled is an antiseptic word, where my children mean a very, very septic act has been done to everyone.)

Wright says Postmodernists have forsaken all metanarrative, and after I unwrap for myself what that means, I see he's right. My children don't believe there's a big puppetmaster in the sky making sure it all turns out for the best, but I do. My parents did and all my peers still do. Christian or not, us Modernists believe there's a happy ending out there waiting for us to get to it. My children don't believe. They know. They know divorce happens to everyone and "winning" the Cold War births a War on Terror, and if we win that war we'll need to kill someone else until someone finally kills us. My children know that if there's a puppetmaster out there, he's a .... Well, I won't use the words they'd use, but they don't like him very much.

Wright doesn't challenge these Postmodernists. He challenges me. He tells me to embrace their accurate understanding of the fall. I weep as I type this, because I don't want to live in their world. I don't wish them to have to live in their world, but I certainly don't want to join them there. I don't want to release the metanarratives that've comforted me through these two generations, and certainly not so I can wrap their cold, accurate, crushing view of reality around my terrified heart each night as I go to sleep.

Wright's right. I must.

Before I'm done thinking out loud, I hope to have thought through one of his challenges. Wright applies his sweaty Jesus to the Postmodern mindframe, and it works. The Modernist Jesus Who's simultaneously puppet, master, and bliss-filled guru spoke to us who never really grappled with the horrors of real life. It takes the real Jesus to wrestle real life to the ground and take victory over it (a Modernist reinterpretation of Postmodernism if ever there were one.) The money paragraph for me is where Wright directly applies his sweaty Jesus to guys like me who program computers for a living.

I intend, over the next few posts, to work my way through to a real way of programming within the context of the real kingdom of the real God. I have no idea where this is going, but it sounds like a helpful metanarrative. :-)

The Rooster Crowed

At that moment the Lord turned and looked at Peter.

Up until that moment, Peter was riding high. He was tracking with his Lord. He was an undercover agent gathering critical intelligence about the events of his Master's arrest and torment. He was lying low and staying close.

He was a hero.

And then the rooster crowed and the bloodied Man Whom Peter loved turned and looked at him.

He'd denied being with the Lord to a servant girl, a servant of the high priest, and some bystanders. Nobodies. Peter didn't look the high priest in the eye and deny Jesus was the Christ. He cunningly kept his cover to servants and bystanders.

Jesus said we'd be judged by every little word said in passing, and here we see it. Jesus valued Peter's response to that servant girl. Denying Jesus to a servant girl was one with denying Him before Caesar. And He didn't brook spying as an excuse. Astounding.

Lord have mercy.

Picture Mosaic

You've probably all seen things like this picture mosaic of Jesus.

In itself, it's really a pretty cool picture of the church. All of us, assembled carefully, make a bird's-eye picture of Jesus on Earth. I post this, though, because it occurs to me the picture only works because some of the shots that make it up are pretty dark. It's impossible to bear the image of God on Earth without bearing the unbearable some portion of the time. He did.

The Smallest Grain

You know, get out of the blogging habit for more than a week or two, and BOOM. It's just gone. :-)

Anyway, I recently spent some time in the book of Amos, and was astounded. With wedding planning and all, I don't have time to tell all that inspired me, but I'd like to focus on one amazing contradiction.

God, Yahweh, the very personal God of all the world and of Israel in particular, is finished with Israel. He spends the first chapter and a half explaining He'll repay everyone to whom justice is owed, but then 7 chapters explaining exactly what Israel (as opposed to Judah - Israel is the "10 tribes" and went into captivity 120 years before Judah, never to return) has done to deserve His wrath, and exactly what His wrath will entail.

In chapter 3 He explains that if He's once roused Himself, everyone who hears Him should know they are doomed. In chapter 5 He details their adulteries. In chapter 7 He allows Amos to reduce the pain they'll feel in their doom. But then, in the terrifying final chapter, He declares how He'll hunt down every member of Israel even to hell itself and slay them.

In the books of history, I read God's purpose and dependability. In Amos I see His wild eyes and His hair whipping with the passion of His declarations. God is furious, but coldly and calculatingly furious. His passion floods the banks of His patience. I've always heard the phrase, "wild-eyed prophet." That phrase sells God short. Those prophets were wild-eyed in a vain attempt to communicate the terror they'd faced, and they told the story because they had no choice. When one hears the fury of the living God, one doesn't go home, light a candle and center one's self.

After 8 1/2 chapters of fury, God says this:

Amos 9:8-10 "Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD [are] on the sinful kingdom, And I will destroy it from the face of the earth; Yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob," Says the LORD. "For surely I will command, And will sift the house of Israel among all nations, As [grain] is sifted in a sieve; Yet not the smallest grain shall fall to the ground. All the sinners of My people shall die by the sword, Who say, 'The calamity shall not overtake nor confront us.'

Wow.

In His fury He can make this promise. He will sift out His people among the nations, but He'll not lose one single grain. He'll slay the sinners, but He'll not allow one of His own to be mislaid, much less killed.

In the Old Testament I've been finding my every concept of God shaken. He is very much not Whom I imagine Him to be. He is entirely Who He Is. He holds fury and tenderness equally firmly, and never fails. His Word never goes forth, except it happens. Leviticus 26 continues to ring in my ears since I first heard it a few weeks ago. It took 1200 years for that chapter to be fully realized, but not one word of it fell to the ground.

Amazing.

You're OK With Us

That's the motto of AMSCOT, a local predatory lending chain. It's also the starting point of many a lost young person's descent into drugs. And it's the call of the highest minded voices in our land. Black, white, muslim, buddhist, male, female, gay, straight, rich, poor, brilliant, challenged, native, foreigner, poet, worker, blue collar, white collar, red state, blue state.

America means, "You're OK with us."

Should that motto work for the church, too?

Skilled Builders

Exd 31:1-6 The LORD also said to Moses,"Look, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, grandson of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. I have filled him with the Spirit of God, giving him great wisdom, intelligence, and skill in all kinds of crafts. He is able to create beautiful objects from gold, silver, and bronze. He is skilled in cutting and setting gemstones and in carving wood. Yes, he is a master at every craft! "And I have appointed Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, to be his assistant. Moreover, I have given special skill to all the naturally talented craftsmen so they can make all the things I have instructed you to make:

1 Cor 3:10 According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.

Moses tells us Bezalel and Oholiab were gifted builders working on the tabernacle in the wilderness. Paul tells us there were other builders of the church in Corinth. There's a very strong analogy between these two groups of builders. The tabernacle and the church are both the dwellings of God, one temporary and the other permanent. The tabernacle was an image of the way God dwells in His kingdom and the church is a foretaste of the kingdom itself. Both come, "some assembly required."

Spurgeon pointed out in Morning and Evening the other day that even the most wonderful bare foundation provides very little comfort during a storm. You need the building as well! The building needs a foundation, but you need the building as badly as a foundation.

Bezalel was a builder. A literal one. Earlier in Exodus Moses appointed judges over 1000's, 100's, 50's and 10's. Bezalel probably was not one of those. He was probably one of those guys who who took his gripes to Joe who was in charge of 10. And Joe might say his gripe was a tough call and tell him to bounce it up to Frank who was in charge of 50's. Bezalel was just a guy in the tribe of Judah. He happened to have a knack for hammering gold, and the Lord called him to service in the tabernacle.

And the Lord filled Bezalel with the Spirit of God.

To make a lampstand?

Yes. To make a lampstand.

And to carve a pomegranate.

The judges over 1000's, 100's, 50's and 10's weren't filled with the Holy Spirit, but Bezalel was. That's dramatic. The Lord ignores the men given power, and fills those skilled in crafts. The Lord pours out His Spirit on Bezalel as truly and as purposefully as He does on Moses, and not just Bezalel: Moreover, I have given special skill to all the naturally talented craftsmen so they can make all the things I have instructed you to make

Can you begin to imagine all the things there are to be made in the house of God that you attend every Sunday? I'll start, but I'm sure together we could come up with many more.

First, did you note from the Corinthians passage the church was not founded by Christ? Paul laid the foundation of Christ, not Christ Himself. Jesus is the Stone and the Cornerstone, but He deputizes stonemasons for the work. Even the most fundamental work in the church is done by men with the filling of the Holy Spirit.

Others built upon that foundation. Floorplans were designed, walls blocked out, doorways, roof-lines, windows all needed to be built for strength and function. Provision had to be made for cooking, cleaning, and disposal of all the kinds of waste life creates. But then the stuff actually needed to be built. Mistakes needed to be corrected. The walls needed plastering and painting. Trim needed to be fitted. Doorknobs and shelves and countertops needed installation. Pictures needed to be picked out for the walls, and flowers for the entrance.

The church is like that.

Money needs to be safely gathered and handled. People need to know how to reach each other during the week. The sick need to be remembered and supported. The lazy need to be chided. The young need to be kept happy and the young in the Lord need milk. The old need to be visited and the mature in the Lord need to be employed in His service. The observant need to heard and the unpleasable need to be singled out. Almost every small gathering needs food and drink, and everyone needs a chance to tell someone how their week is going. Everyone needs a little advice and everyone needs a little coaching in how to receive it graciously (especially when it's poor.) The young singles need to feel included. The parents of young children need to feel included. The older couples need to feel included. The older singles need to feel included. The new people need to feel included. The steady dependables need to feel included.

And you are skilled at one or more of these things. Bezalel was skilled in all of them. Oholiab was skilled in one or two. Both were filled with the same Spirit toward the same end - building the tabernacle of God.

The tabernacle was wild with incredible variety, and every bit of it was executed by skilled craftsmen filled with the Spirit. Did you know there were a dozen or more pomegranates of blue, purple, and scarlet embroidered around the hem of Aaron's vestments? Or the lampstand with its almond blossom lamps was entirely beaten from a single piece of gold? Or that the Lord specified this because it mattered to Him? The construction of the tabernacle was spelled out in painstaking detail, and showed just how many jobs the Lord's builders performed.

These littlest things matter to Him, and He's naturally gifted you to add some little thing to His church - to your church. He's ready to fill you with the Spirit. Are you ready to build? Your church will profit greatly when your gifts are employed in His service.

Engage!

How many people have you had over to eat in the last two weeks? Or, if you're an introvert, the last four weeks?

Yeah. If you haven't, you're not alone.

Have you given any thought to why?

The human brain is wired to need social connection, but getting people together is a tough job. We're wired with lots of needs and connection is one of them. We need social connection just like we need food and sleep. Food and sleep both require their own share of work, but they are very loud needs and motivate us directly. Shopping and cooking are mildly painful experiences for most of us, so we pay good money to have other people do it. Many of us wish we loved cooking, but most of us simply tolerate it because being hungry is worse.

Eating is easier! We didn't become the most overweight nation ever by hating the eating part of the equation. No, eating is the pleasure while cooking is the pain, and hunger is the bridge between the two. The pleasure of eating might convince some of us to cook, and the desire for energy and health might persuade others, but hunger is the first alarm system and almost all of us find hunger persuasive.

Imagine your life without hunger. Imagine you still needed food, but you would never feel hungry again. I'd probably still cook the occasional special meal or maybe enjoy my favorite food once in a while, but there's no chance I'd eat enough of the boring foods that keep me going. I'd find myself losing weight. And soon I'd be losing too much weight. And eventually I'd lose so much weight my body would begin to fail. It would not take long before I'd wish I could be hungry again!

Ditto for sleep. We only stop the fun and lay our bodies down because tiredness is so intolerable. If we found ever a cure for feeling tired, we'd quit sleeping entirely. Soon we'd be suffering from inexplicable pains, poor judgment, and long term memory failure, but we wouldn't feel tired so at midnight we'd still be rearing to go. Midnight works great for curling up with those systematic theologies! Within a year or two we'd all be educated theologians. Or just maybe dead. We need sleep, and tiredness is the first alarm that tells us we're not getting enough sleep.

The feeling of hunger is different from our need to eat, and the feeling of tiredness is different from our need to sleep. If we were to cure the feeling without curing the need, we'd be in an awful fix.

I have the thought that the church is in such an awful fix because we've cured the feeling that once drove us to connect with each other.

It's hard to nail down exactly what that painful feeling might be, but we're not feeling it any more. I think of it as a mysterious mix of purposelessness, isolation, disconnection, and/or loneliness that once drove us to seek out relationship. Maybe we've lost the ability to clearly distinguish between all those feelings, but come 9:00 PM we sit down and "see what's on."

We're bored.

But we don't stay bored long.

At the first twinge of boredom, we surf our TV, Facebook, and the blogosphere. We've got DVD's, iPods, and XBoxes. We're IM chatting about youtube videos and Tweeting and Retweeting everything. Maybe the boomers shy away from Twitter and the teens hardly know what Network Television used to be, but together we unwind in front of channels, sites, videos and email before the pain of boredom has a chance to settle in.

We'd never try popping a No-doze every time we were tired or a Red Bull every time we were hungry, but we'll kick on the tube without a second thought. Give us 5 seconds without an entertaining idea, and the lure of easy entertainment ropes us in. We don't even have to be seduced any more. We'll set up auto-payment to our cable provider to make sure we have our fix. The scary thing is that advertisers pay entertainers very well to help us quit feeling our pain, so our entertainment is pretty cheap in the end.

But boredom is a blessing! We need more boredeom! Boredom is as important to our lives as hunger and tiredness, but entertainment painlessly melts boredom away. Oh sure, TV's not perfect. "There're 400 channels and nothing on," but maybe that's a sign of our problem. Perhaps we are so deprived of [something] that normal antidotes for boredom don't work any more. After a week or two without sleep, No-doze is worthless. What if normal entertainment loses its effectiveness when we're freakishly over-bored? Maybe we're so deeply bored we have to be twittering while watching a movie and planning the review we'll give it on Facebook to just feel normal?

To what might God have designed our boredom to drive us?

Hunger and tiredness drive us to nutrition and sleep. Red Bull can cure hunger and No-doze can cure tiredness, but neither can provide the things nutrition and sleep give us. We ought not to cure hunger or tiredness flippantly ... nor boredom. The objective of hunger is to drive us to prepare food and the objective of tiredness is to drive us to stop the fun and call it a night. What's the objective of boredom?

Engagement.

Our God created us to engage with life, to grab hold of its highs and lows, and to grapple with its possibilities. We were created to create. We are loved that we might love. We're steady so others might rely upon us through thick and thin. But the boredom that once drove us to engage life is systematically being anaesthetized. Entertainment is a huge industrial complex, and the most brilliant American minds are thinking and experimenting and sweating to make sure we're entertained as often and as deeply as possible. The promise of American advertising is that we need no longer suffer the painful labor of engaging with life, with each other, and with our own demons. We can check out a fun youtube video any time we need a break.

My problem is not with social media. I blog (obviously enough) and some day I'm going to Facebook (I see it coming, like a thunderstorm on the horizon.) A mature, spiritual, and complete person can engage with life and others using Twitter. My problem is I'm not mature, spiritual and complete. I'm human and easily drawn aside. Given a way to eat without the drag of cooking, which of us doesn't eat out too often? Given a chance to relax in front of the computer instead of shutting it down and going to bed, which of us doesn't blog a little bit longer? Given a chance to watch a movie a friend recommended instead of visiting them and listening to what's been happening in their life, which of us doesn't stretch out on the sofa?

The body of Christ is out there. You can reach out and touch your brothers and sisters - they need it. You can see their eyes light up or darken. You can hear the rhythms and intonations of their speech. You can smell their griefs in a hug. You can share a meal.

We are creations of this Earth, wired to engage with all 5 senses, not images alone. We were made to make and keep covenant with each other, to promise to be there for each other through thick and thin, and to seal that promise over roast beef and mashed potatoes.

Our brothers and sisters need meat and potatoes love from us. They need to see our eyes and feel the warmth of our skin when we say we'll be there for them. Promises on a screen vanish with a keystroke, and deep down those brothers and sisters know it. We know it, too. We need the same gift back from them, but getting and giving solid, earthy love is going to require the work of engagement from us. We're going to need to let ourselves be bored, and then let that boredom drive us to the work of connecting to the body of Christ.


If we're not careful, the church in America won't end with a bang, but with a punch line. We're long on jokes, but short on the ties that bind. Those ties require work, and eating together is a great place to start.

Drill and Ceremony

A little lad asked me the other day why the British soldiers all stood in a line to be shot during the American Revolution.

It's a much better question than he knew.

The answer is rooted in that least coveted of human emotions, fear, and that dodgiest of human studies, history.

Some several hundred years before Christ was born, some Macedonians conquered the world behind the phalanx. The phalanx was an amazing military invention (invented several centuries before Alexander, but certainly employed brilliantly by The Great). It was a juggernaut made of people. Each man carried an 8 foot spear and a shield large enough to protect his entire body. He stood elbow-to-elbow with the man on his either side and several rows deep. They advanced on the enemy relentlessly.

In every decisive ancient battle you see a radically lopsided casualty report. Alexander's forces lost 500-1,000 men at Gaugamela, for example, while Darius's forces lost 50,000-90,000 of the 100,000 on the field. The reason for this discrepancy is fear. During the height of the battle each side might be losing hundreds of casualties equally, then comes the breakthrough (yes, that's where that word comes from.) Alexander employed some daring tricks to create a weakness right in the center of the enemy lines, attacked it in force, and broke through to the soft underbelly of the Persian army.

As soon as the Persians knew the Greeks were behind them, they panicked and lost military discipline. Fear started making their decisions for them. Up until that moment, the Greeks had probably lost 500 men and the Persians 1,000. Given that the Greeks were outnumbered 2 to 1, that was survivable. But from the moment of panic the Persians were helpless babes in the woods.

Ancient armies won battles by overcoming the urge to panic and lost battles when it overcame them.

Every human's heart is gripped by icy fear. No one has so much courage as to be immune to panic. Alexanders soldiers the bravest men in the world and he didn't teach them some secret courage meditation. Winners and the losers both go to war with the men they have, not with the superheroes you read about in the books. No, the Greeks overcame fear with discipline and trust. They taught their men to stand in a straight line, to fight in very close proximity to their support, and to trust both their leaders and the men standing at either elbow. The Greeks were better trained and better led, so they were rewarded with the breakthrough. They overcame panic by relying on each other and obeying the commands of trustworthy leaders.

All ancient war was fought by men standing just as close together as possible. Roman soldiers were trained to use their swords as stabbing weapons, not hacking weapons, because then they could stand twice as closely to each other without sharp objects flailing around wildly. This made them four times as effective because they had more "firepower" concentrated on a smaller part of the enemy lines and because standing more closely to their comrades gave them courage.

The British stood in close lines, not because they wanted to prove they were brave, but to make themselves brave. They wanted to concentrate their firepower and courage most effectively. Against similarly trained European armies, the British forces were terrifyingly courageous. Their reputation for steely determination under fire was legendary, and terrifying. You now know it was courage born of discipline and trust.

What you may not know is that the American army could not have won the Revolutionary War by shooting from behind trees. We eventually needed to field conventional armies and fight conventional European battles to win our freedom. The rifles of the time fired too slowly and too inaccurately to panic a trained army. Decisive military actions were won by the bayonette, by achieving a breakthrough, and by causing panic in the enemy. We beat the British because we learned just enough discipline to defeat the small army they could spare to put down our rebellion. They were fighting on too many worldwide fronts and could not send enough soldiers to do the job they were given. The smallness of the British army arrayed against us and the arrival of Baron von Steuben in America to teach us Prussian "Drill and Ceremony," are what ended our tenure as loyal British subjects. (The US Army still refers to von Steuben's "Blue Book" of drill and ceremony to this day.)

The good Baron taught our troops to march in disciplined lines so we could maneuver enough to beat the British. He taught us to mass our firepower while still remaining mobile. And in so doing, he taught our soldiers courage. He taught them how to stand closely enough to each other while maneuvering under fire to give each other the bravery to survive against professional British armies.

It wasn't until the machine gun and WWI this equation changed, but even then it only changed in appearance. American soldiers "stand" closely to each other on radios, and we mass our firepower in other ways. We still survive and thrive on the modern battlefield by overcoming panic through discipline and trust.

Anyway, all that was fun to talk about. The little lad enjoyed hearing how battle worked, and I enjoyed reinforcing to him over and over that courage is something we gain from discipline and trust, by standing side-by-side with other men, not from some internal miracle of will. Hopefully, it will help a little bit some day.

But surely you sense the parallels for the church flying through my mind now?

The church reminds me of a bunch of Virginia farmboys wondering why the Brits don't run back to England after they've sniped a few Redcoats from the woods. I suspect we're looking for "a few brave men," when really we need to learn to work more closely with each other and trust our leaders. Courage doesn't come from "want to." Courage is a measurable, reproducible fruit of discipline and trust.

I suspect the church needs Drill and Ceremony.

Amissional

I'm not much of a "joiner," so it's not a big surprise that I'm not on the "Missional" bandwagon.

I understand Missional to mean every member of the body of Christ living as a local missionary to their own community. Wikipedia offers this quote:

"No one can say: ‘Since I’m not called to be a missionary, I do not have to evangelize my friends and neighbors.’ There is no difference, in spiritual terms, between a missionary witnessing in his home town and a missionary witnessing in Katmandu, Nepal. We are all called to go—even if it is only to the next room, or the next block.”"

These arguments do nothing for me and don't really even interest me, much less convict me. They are founded in philosophy, not scripture, and the philosophy doesn't move me.

God told Abraham:

Gen 12:1-3 Now the LORD had said to Abram: "Get out of your country, From your family And from your father's house, To a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

And

Gen 17:7-8 And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God."

No one in Abraham's family was called to be a missionary - not one soul. For all pragmatic purposes, there was just one saved family on the Earth making every other living being a mission field. God sent Abraham into that completely virgin field there in Canaan, and didn't ask Abraham to preach one word of the Truth. God DID command Abraham to "go," but never said a word about evangelizing. That's a pretty significant omission if we're all "sent."

God did, however, carefully command Abraham to sanctify himself and his household.

He didn't tell Abraham to spread the Truth at all. He told Abraham to surgically mutilate himself and every other man in his household, but God didn't say a word about preaching anything.

Gen 17:10-11 This [is] My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised; and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you.

Circumcision was a physical act of sanctification, of holiness, of setting one's self aside for relationship to God. Abraham was commanded to holiness, not to missions. And Abraham was promised that by keeping the covenant of holiness, all the nations of the world would be blessed.

The kingdom needs missionaries, men and women gifted by the Spirit to the work of outreach. And every healthy church will grow missionaries in due time. An old pastor once said the purpose of preaching was to humble the sinner, glorify the Savior, and promote holiness. If we do these three things, in this order, missionaries will spring up in a healthy body just like feet in a healthy infant.

If we decide we are "missional" churches, we'll be no healthier than a body with 200feet and no hands, eyes, ears, noses or sense.

Bragging Rights

I serve a King. Sure He's invisible, but I know He's real because He keeps His promises.

Perfectly.

To the letter.

My King once promised Daniel there would be 4 kingdoms to arise, the 4th would be different, and then a tiny little stone would end all kingdoms and grow to fill the Earth.

The Babylonian Empire was displaced by the Medo-Persian Empire. The Persians were displaced by the Greeks. The Greeks were replaced by the Romans, who were strong but who mixed Republic and Empire within one government.

My King, the Stone Cut Without Hands, came to Earth during the Roman Empire's power and ended it. The little Stone that smashed the feet of the pagan empires grew from the day the Spirit took residence on Earth, and grows still. The empire of Christ grows, even as its members struggle daily with confusion over what it means to be an empire not of the this world and yet in it. The rise of the British Empire or the Ottoman Empire or China as a vast world power cannot stop my King. He has promised to fill the entire Earth, and He will.

I don't know what that means, but I know it's true.

I'm proud to be a thrall of this great King. It's an honor to serve Him and to be loved by Him and to love Him in return. I am thankful that He counts my service with grace, and that the little things I do might increase His reign in some way.

And my King has kept His promises to me.

He promised keep my heart and mind, and 45 years down the road He's done so.

I've watched other brighter, stronger, better equipped men stumble and fall at trials that merely tested me sorely. My King and His loyal subjects preserved me in my darkest hours. Apart from Him, I'd be addicted, insane, and/or dead at my own hand. I've seen my life lived out by others who would not call on my King, and I've seen where I'd be today without Him. I was a lesser man than these, and I was carried in mercy by the King Who promised He'd always be there.

I am a happy man. I am blessed as my life continues down this new road and new adventure. I'm sorry I have not been much of a blog friend lately, but it's been a hard, tiring, stressful, confusing, draining few months with enough moments of true exhilaration to keep me glad I'm going the way I'm going. There's been precious little time, but there've been a lot of joys. Thank you for being here to read this and keep up just this little bit.

I'm still out here. I'm still happy. And I have a lot of which to boast. It just happens none of it is anything I've done.

Willpower

Deu 31:7-8 Then Moses called for Joshua, and as all Israel watched he said to him, "Be strong and courageous! For you will lead these people into the land that the LORD swore to give their ancestors. You are the one who will deliver it to them as their inheritance. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD is the one who goes before you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor forsake you."

...

Deut 31:16-18 The LORD said to Moses, "You are about to die and join your ancestors. After you are gone, these people will begin worshiping foreign gods, the gods of the land where they are going. They will abandon me and break the covenant I have made with them. Then my anger will blaze forth against them. I will abandon them, hiding my face from them, and they will be destroyed. Terrible trouble will come down on them, so that they will say, `These disasters have come because God is no longer among us!' At that time I will hide my face from them on account of all the sins they have committed by worshiping other gods.




You are amazing, God.

You knew, as You sent Joshua to lead Your children into Canaan, that they would whore against You.

You had a choice.

You knew they would fall away in Canaan. You knew as each judge rose and passed in Israel, they would fall away all over again. You knew as You anointed the many kings, even the ones after Your own heart would lay a frail foundation. You knew Israel would end up on the high places and in the groves, worshipping anyone but You.

You had a choice.

You could choose whether to lead them into Canaan or not. You could chose to wash your hands of them all. You could chose to leave them an alimony gift, and walk away. You'd have spared Yourself centuries of struggle and frustration. You decided to lead Joshua into Canaan.

You didn't lead Israel in false hope, either. You knew before You gifted Joshua and emboldened him to his task that he would succeed, and that his success would bring Israel's downfall. You knew if they failed Israel would not be a nation, and if they succeeded they'd be a nation set against You. They would reject You either way, but only one way would You have to suffer.

And You led Israel into Canaan.

You did it all. You went the whole way with them, from Deuteronomy to Malachi.

And still You had a choice.

You went even further in Matthew. You've come in flesh and been a King to us here, on our own Earth. You've been and gone and left the Spirit in your absence, and You've kept your prophecy never to grow angry with Your people again. You've been satisfied in Your work of perfect redemption.

We've done no better than Israel. With so great a revelation, greater than the plagues of Egypt, greater than conquests of David, greater than the building of the temples, we're a struggling church, and struggling more against each other than against anything else.

You've kept your promise, stood by Your choice, loved against all hope. We're people of unclean lips, but You circumcised our hearts.

Nothing has changed, even now. May Your Spirit work in my heart that I not fail You, but even at that I know I will.

May Your Name, the All-Giving, be honored in the Earth. May it be honored on this blog. May it be honored in me. And may the kingdom You tried to give to Israel so many times finally come. May the the people of this Earth hear Your testimony and honor You as their sole Friend. May they know Who is their King, and embrace the love You've struggled so flawlessly to pour out on us. May Your will be done in this place, as enthusiastically as it is in heaven.

You have provided everything for us, and we cast ourselves on Your providence. It is in You we find our every need met. We come to You as a token of our dependency and ask for Your gifts. Please forgive us of every way in which we fail to believe in Your goodness and power toward us. And we forgive those who fail us.

Keep us from any disaster which would overwhelm our feeble faith. And protect us from the enemy that would destroy in us the spark of Your life.

You are beautiful in every way, and we love you.

Thank you.

All Consuming Fire

2 Ch 5:13 & 14
It came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers [were] as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD; and when they lifted up [their] voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick, and praised the LORD, [saying], For [he is] good; for his mercy [endureth] for ever: that [then] the house was filled with a cloud, [even] the house of the LORD; So that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of God.

The Lord appeared as a pillar of fire and a column of smoke to the people of Israel. He covered all Mount Sinai with clouds and thunders and lightnings. He filled the tent of meeting, the tabernacle, with this cloud.

... And not again in the 300 years prior to this event!

300 years ago, in 1708, George Washington had still not been born. America was still a dark continent. Austria had still not annexed Hungary. The Great Alliance bested France in some war I've never heard of. 300 years is a long, long time. Most of us can barely read English written 300 years ago.

Generations had lived, loved the Lord, and walked away from Him repeatedly. Canaan had been occupied. The judges had come, ruled, died, and been replaced with new judges by God because His people could not curb their lusts without a judge over them. They'd grown tired of judges, and begged for and received a king in Saul. Then God provided better in David. Their government had completely changed several times, and been transferred untold times.

They'd been gathering 3 times a year (or failing to do so) for as long as anyone could remember. They'd been watching the annual sacrifices and hearing the readings of the law. They'd been tithing and resting on Saturdays for generations. Their religion was set in concrete.

And then Solomon started his building program. I don't know how long it took, but if you read the previous 5 chapters of 2 Chronicles, you'll see the immense scale of the temple. The "bath" at the front of the temple held 24,000 gallons of water. The Holy of Holies alone was overlaid with 45,000 pounds of pure gold. The place was a monster.

And the response of Israel was equal to the task. They poured out their hearts and pockets into building this place. Everything about Israel was utterly consumed in financing and enabling this house David had envisioned. Again, read the previous chapters to see what it looks like when God's people become excited about building God's house.

When the time came, the priests led the people in united praise. The band struck up a song, and everyone overflowed to the Lord.

And the Lord overflowed back.

The people were stunned.

They'd heard of such things happening, but they'd never remotely even felt a quiver of nervousness by imagining that such a thing might happen to them. God failed to warn them that He might actually dwell visibly in the house Solomon was dedicating.

Their unexpected Guest arrived.

2Ch 7:3 & 4
And when all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down, and the glory of the LORD upon the house, they bowed themselves with their faces to the ground upon the pavement, and worshipped, and praised the LORD, [saying], For [he is] good; for his mercy [endureth] for ever. Then the king and all the people offered sacrifices before the LORD.

When God breaks in upon His world, everything changes. Problems fade and invisible things grow solid. Daily bread stales to mere distraction. The will of God grows savory. It's God. And He's here. And I'm seeing Him fill His house right in front of my eyes.

If a celebrity even just a cute girl gives me a second glance, I'm flattered. If God comes in response to my work of building and my praise, I'm flummoxed. Israel planted their faces on the pavement because the Spirit was moving in their hearts. They worshipped from love. They siezed the honor the Lord bestowed on them, and returned it with fiery love.

They were stunned.

Stunned the way a humble guy is stunned the first time he realizes "that" girl is looking at him with real love. It feels misplaced. Inappropriate. Impossible. For God to honor their sacrifices and inhabit the dwelling they'd made for Him with their weak hands loosened their knees miraculously.

2Ch 6:18
But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built!

And Solomon was right. God could not dwell in that tiny little house. It constrained Him.

So He took it upon Himself to be born of a virgin.

God traded in that house on a single, not-so-beautiful, human body.

But the glory that filled the house and brought all Israel to her knees was exactly the glory that filled that Man. It was God Who inhabited the temple, and it was God Who inhabited the temple on Earth.

The people followed Him, even though the veil was firmly closed and the fire of Divinity was hidden deeply within Him. They sensed something, and they were stunned at the wisdom and authority that flowed from His mouth and heart. The dove's descent onto Jesus was about the best clue most of Israel ever had that the Shekinah Glory had filled the temple once again.

That, and Jesus' announcement He would destroy that temple and raise it again from nothing in 3 days.

The Man Jesus contained all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, but God wanted more. It was God who decided to tear down the temple of His own body, leaving not one stone atop another.

And it was God Who raised that temple again, but this time not a single body. The temple had once been a badger skin tent. Then it was gold overlaying cedar and stone. Then it was a single human body. And when Christ rose from the dead, the temple grew larger than David or Solomon might ever have have dreamt. The temple grew into the glorious spiritual gathering of bodies that is the church.

At Pentacost, the Lord descended again to take residence in this new temple. He filled it with the fire of His presence. Moses and Solomon presided when the Lord descended in a cloud of smoke into the first temples. The Spirit presided when He descended like tongues of fire and sat upon each of the people in that upper room, filling them with His life and word.

Strip away the glitter of the Christmas the world tries to sell you.

Strip away the family bonding and sweet traditions.

Strip away even the manger story with its wise men, angels, and Mary.

What remains is the reason God was ever wrapped in swaddling clothes. Before He could be Christ in us, the hope of glory, He needed to be Christ the Seed sown in death for us.

Every single object described in the temple corresponds to an equivalent office in the church, filled by someone who loves Jesus Christ. And when the people give their gold and jewels to the building of the body, and when they give their hearts to praising His glory, the Shekinah Glory fills the temple because the Lord is good, and His mercy extends forever.

May your Christmas be rich in the stunning power of the invisible.

Honest Abe

There are those who insult Lincoln as America's Julius Caesar, who overthrew the Republic of Rome to make himself emperor, and accuse him of railroading America for his own fiendish purposes. They powerfully inveigh against his deconstruction of the Constitution, and the bloody war fought to satisfy his need to dominate the honorable men of the South. And those people are not defined by the fact they were raised Southern. They're dedicated Christians from all over the country.

You can find some of them here: http://www.theamericanview.com/

Just search for "Lincoln."

The argument is essentially this. America was formed as a union of sovereign states held together by a Constitution. In fact, the essential sovereign unit of American government was the state until Lincoln's power grab. When the South looked up and saw that their right to sovereignly rule themselves was being imposed upon by a self-important North, they resisted. They would not see the union, as orginally conceived, torn apart by Northern self-righteousness and arrogance. And Lincoln merely used those Northern vices in imposing his own power lust on the nation, and in sending many thousands of good American boys to their deaths.

The argument is disingenuous.

It ignores a handful of key points in building its airtight case. Actually, most arguments truly are airtight when seen from one perspective. The question, of course, is what one's perspective is, but that's the actual subject of this post and we'll get to it a little later. The history on this topic is of interest to me, so I'm going to carry on with it a little longer.

I was raised to believe that at times the American government was my enemy. I married a woman who sometimes believed the American government was our enemy. I buy food from a guy who believes the American government is sometimes our enemy. And I had immediate sympathy to this Lincoln as Caesar argument from the very first time I heard it back in the late '80's.

It was interesting to read an impassioned defense of this argument against Lincoln.

Then read 14 of Lincoln's speeches.

His arguments against secession went like this:

OK. Secede if you must. Just do it the right way. Don't do it by force of arms, but by force of election. The ballot formed the country, and only the ballot can splinter it.

Furthermore, it is right to give the entire country a vote on the secession of any part of the country, and that for several very good reasons. First, is there any contract which once formed can be broken by any one party at any time? The states have severally entered into contract together, and have profitably enriched one another in many ways. For the seceding states to take the wealth gained from the other states without compensation is theft. For the seceding states to close off the possible benefits of the contract from the remaining states is painful. They must honor their contract, even as they seek to end it.

Furthermore, there is no way to divide the nation that doesn't result in the overall impoverishment of each part. No matter how the country might be split, the states will have to deal with each other and the fallout of any separation. The final, resulting nations will be poorer for the division. So why divide with blood? If there must be division, why not equitable, legal, ballot-driven division.

Lastly, it is unthinkable that all of the states should decide to evict just one, and yet what is the difference between every state seceding from the one and every state agreeing to kick that one state out? The mean, selfish kind of a freedom demanded by the Southern states was an unjust freedom. The selfish acts of one member of a family have a depressing effect on every member. Sovereignty is not the same as freedom from obligation. When one member secedes from a marriage, it is not a simple and detached act of personal freedom; divorce is a devastating blow dealt to every member of even the extended families involved. The states are obligated to deal with the honest effects of their attempted secession.

These are reasonable arguments. To compare Caesar, who made himself Rome's destroying savior by marching his army into Rome and conquering the capital, against Lincoln who worked with the Congress and left the power of legislation in Congress' hands throughout the rebellion, is too much.

Lincoln made mistakes, and did things that caused questions in his time and ours. His suspension of Habeus Corpus is still talked about among people who talk about such things, but even at that it was only for a time and then Congress was given the reins. Lincoln was a man and not a god, and it showed in his mistakes. He was given a hard road to walk, and he walked it as honestly as I believe any man could. He took brave steps over and over and he saw the job through to its final stages.

But there are those who are not content for him to be a man. They need him to be an American Satan.

Why?

I believe it's because of their own desires. They desire their states to be free today in way they never will be again. Fair enough, but if they get their way in this will they be done? Or will they then want sovereign counties, and cities, and homes? (I'll tell you one thing. They'll love quoting that question within their own contexts.)

These are big questions. Where to place the dividing line between personal sovereignty and community good is contentious.

What I find interesting is that in 1861 this line was drawn by men who wanted to hold other men as slaves. The cry is loud and long that slavery was never the issue, and I hear that cry, but I cannot respect it.

In the end, Lincoln did not fire the first shot of the Civil War. The secessionists fired first on Fort Sumter. Lincoln had promised that he would not march on the South, and he never broke that promise. He proposed compromise after compromise, but the South would have none of it. They wanted the right to do what they wanted to do, and it cannot escape me that what they wanted to do was inarguably evil.

The first intended use of the lofty freedom for which those men of the South died was the continuance of a great evil.

And I believe I find a pattern in that. We are most usually willing to "fire the first shot" when we are protecting our right to do some evil after which we lust.

Having read Lincoln and his detractors, I am more impressed with Lincoln's character, courage and ideals than ever before.

My point of view has moved a lot in the last several years.

=========

I'm about to take a bit of leap, so be sure to come with me.

I believe this was my mistake in trying promote the home church. It was not enough for me to want to see the church done differently. I needed the steeple-churches to suffer demolition. Following Luther's example, I wanted to secede from all Christian organizations and I wanted their hierarchies blown to smithereens.

My point of view has moved a lot on the church, too.

I find myself wondering how many of the men manning pulpits under gaudy steeples are men for whom I'd have the utmost respect, if I only knew their story. Instead, I only know them by a single doctrinal stand they've taken somewhere along the line, and that as framed by their enemies.

May the Lord forgive my ignorance. And may He bless the men who stand for Him as well as they know how.

The Body of Christ

I was reading in Scientific American today about HSPs - Heat Shock Proteins.

The Wikipedia article is pretty technical, and the SciAm article is only slightly less so. I'll save you the trouble of reading them and then jump to how it amazed me again at what the body of Christ truly is.

An HSP is charged with helping other proteins do their jobs. There are proteins specific to every cancer cell. The HSP cannot fight cancer, that's the job of our T-cells, but it can snag a little signature of that protein and take it to a T-cell, for example. Another protein might need to be folded up like a pretzel to work, and be having a hard time growing into its mature shape. HSPs make that folding happen. They can't do what the protein needs to do, but they can help that protein get itself folded into the right shape.

(And, BTW, to enhance the benefits of HSPs in your mortal body, exercise. Their rate of production is increased under sufficient stress, and heating up your core temp with exercise does the trick, according to a SciAm side-blurb. I'd love to think of how that applies to Christ's body, but not today.)

Everything the body does, every single little thing from digesting food to fighting disease to kissing a baby on the forehead, requires the interaction of millions of entire subsystems. Even something as simple as a bone cannot do its job without systems on top of systems and within systems. And what's more, almost everything in the body does more than one thing. It does its thing, but it makes sure other things can do their thing, too.

The finite but immeasurable complexity of our Creator's work astounds.

The connection between our bodies and the body of Christ is almost unavoidable, so I'm not going to belabor it. The least, most hidden member of the body, when functioning correctly, could be that perfectly tailored HSP for someone. Without ever being able to fight off a cancer, the quietest soul in a congregation might touch someone in a special way that makes him confident enough to resist evil. We need each other in ways we cannot begin to imagine.

And that's what I want to belabor.

We just found out about HSPs in fruit flies in 1962. It was 1977 before anyone realized that what happens in a fruit fly happens in mice, too. It was another pair of decades before they began to see just how remarkably versatile the lowly HSP really is. I could rattle off story after story of science's amazing discoveries that things they considered completely unimportant are actually keys to our very existence.

It turns out HSPs have one other little function. It's of some moderate importance, I imagine.

HSPs keep us from being mutated genetic freaks.

Seriously.

Micro-evolution happens every day of our lives, in every living being, and every living species. Most mutations are highly negative, but somehow we don't die. That somehow is tied to these HSPs. No has figured out just how yet, but somehow HSPs buffer and suppress poor genetic guesses in our bodies. It's these lowly, unknown, functionless HSPs that keep us from spinning out of control.

Again, the parallel to the body of Christ is amazing. Think of it the next time that bunch of old ladies in the corner is keeping the church from doing something that would otherwise be really exciting. They may just be keeping your church from mutating beyond repair. :-)

Here's the thing that floored me. Scientists are only just now beginning to see how very complex the human body really is, but I think they might be light-years ahead of Christians who think they have an idea how the body of Christ works.

I've done home church. I've done pentacostal revival. I've done presbyterian accuracy. I've done random gathering. And EVERY ONE OF THEM has profited me. I've been blessed by the body of Christ every time I've joined myself to her, in every form.

I've argued with passion that every church building should be burnt to the ground and that every pastor should be made to get a real job. I've argued for the freeing of every member of the body to serve their function, without mediation by some hierarchy. And I've argued for one hierarchy over another. And I've argued against the anarchy of home church. (No, these are not in chronological order.)

I've arrived, through all this mess, to the place I'm almost unwilling to argue against anything. (I'll still argue for lots of stuff, though. :-) )

The body of Christ is too complex and wonderful for me.

She responds very well to leadership. She responds very well to freedom. She responds very well to anything around which her members can unite, which is to say anything that does not inherently create confusion. And somehow, when placed in swirling confusion, she can create some amazing and beautiful order.

She can also be crushed by leadership. She can also be starved in freedom. She can also fail in the middle of the most unity-centric, ordered care imaginable.

Whatever else she may be, the body of Christ is far, far beyond mortal understanding. I suspect the bio-spiritual dance of the children of the Living God demotes the mystery of HSPs to elementary school levels. And I used to think I had it all on a string in my 20's.

Wow.

The best I can do is prepare myself to behave properly within her, give my best to her, nourish myself on the purest milk and meat I can find, and then love her wherever I may find her.

Anything else is certainly beyond me.

The Church's Biggest Problem

KB put together a great post on the evolution of the church, tracking it from the fellowship it was in the 1st century to the enterprise it is now. His take is fascinating, and as usual I cannot comment on it due to technical bugaboos. I cannot even go back and reread it before I pen this knock-on post. Ah the joy of technological limitations.

Way back when I was able to read KB's post that once through bloglines, I agreed and disagreed with it. I agreed that an ideal 21st century church would look different from an ideal 1st century church, and that the differences would be gains for the church overall. I disagreed that the paradigm of an enterprise could ever be a profitable one for any church, ever. I was tongue-tied, though, because I am not sure exactly what KB meant by "enterprise." I know what enterprise means to me, and I don't support that. I just don't know what it means to KB, and I'm sure if I did I would support whatever he means.

I think maybe the biggest problem facing the church today is our obsession with finding and fixing the biggest problem in the church today.

Along those lines, KB's post brought to mind an email I wrote a month or so ago (while I was busy not blogging.) It was about a book review I'm currently not writing while I'm not blogging. In the book, the author relates a life-changing experience he had doing a particular spiritual discipline, and proceeds to sell that discipline as the "one thing" missing in the lives of all Christians and the one thing that, if it were present, would change everything.

Here's what I wrote in that email:

The answer to fixing Christianity has to lie somewhere else than finding 99% of it's best and brightest certifiably insane.

The author tells persuasively of his experience learning how to do this method on a 6 week retreat. He gives ample evidence of changed lives in everyone learning it and of the lasting, beneficial effect the experience had on people from very different walks of life.

But is that proof of the method? I doubt it.

As I was reading his story, it occurred to me that the Navigators, the Promise Keepers, the Holiness Movements, the Charismatics, the Legalists, the Missionaries, and Everyone Else can produce equally stirring anecdotal evidence.

Maybe that's proof that all anecdotal evidence should be rejected? It probably should, but I doubt that's the lesson here too.

Instead, I think this is proof of overly narrow root cause analysis.

Each of these groups was doing a different thing, but they were all doing it "together" with other believers. The common factor in each of these widely varied stories is that a group of Christians was wholly committed to really connecting with each other to do something profitable.

Given any silly excuse, if Christians get together with love in our hearts, we will touch each other and the Lord in life-changing ways. It takes a little excitement, a little leadership, a little hope, and a little focus to start that flow of love between brothers and sisters that bonds us together.

It's those bonds that change our lives.

It's like being in a family. Which is most important? Financial security? Emotional security? Passion? Purpose?

Just try living without any one of those things.

The church needs doctrine. She needs connection. She needs worship. She needs purpose.

I think I still believe a little bit in the house church movement. It's hard to say, though, because there are other needs that are more important. When a man is out of oxygen, he doesn't care so much that he's sleep-deprived. I wish I might see the church organized differently, but before I spend energy there it seems there are other things that might be more important.

The need to find and fix the most important crisis facing the church today seems universal, and it seems to be driving us further and further apart. I'm tempted to name this tendency to obsess over the church's biggest fault, "The tree-trunk of division springing from the taproot of Laodicean Pride." We proclaim that we see when really we're blinded by the lumber in our own eyes. I know I blew 10 years of my life chasing that wild goose.

I think I know what to do about the tree-trunk.

Quit trying to fix the church.

Our worst problem is trying to fix every problem. Maybe it's because we imagine we're wise enough to know every problem. Or maybe it's that we like fixing big things instead of doing little things. Or maybe everything's pretty much OK and we need to get on with the business of doing that which God's been preparing us to do for all these centuries.

Whatever it is, we need to put 80% of our energies into loving the Christians to whom we are closest. Maybe with whatever's left over we can tinker with trying to revolutionize the church in our generation. I don't know, but I know I really need to pour my life out for brothers and sisters whom I can touch. I need to form bonds with my brothers and sisters that can survive the fires of disagreement, repentance, and boredom. I need to commit to people with all their messy needs, rather than ideas or disciplines or quests with all their manageable sterility.

And if that means learning to bond with emergent Christians, then show me the way to Starbucks. I can always buy a lemonade smoothie. :-)

An Apologetic Moment

I don't care much for apologetics. It seems a silly thing to me to try to prove God exists when the issue is one of judgement and repentance. Preach the word and trust that the spark inside a man will declare God's reality more loudly than any bacterial flagellum.

That said, an apologetic article in Touchstone Magazine caught my eye last week. The author was attempting to prove that it was the atheists who were really stepping out on faith by not believing in God. The absence of proof is not the proof of absence and all that, you know. I don't have the article in front of me, so I cannot quote it. Sorry.

Man, he pointed out, really ought to have a hard time conceiving of God's reasonings. It doesn't make sense for us to grasp God's thoughts. If God were to decide to hide Himself from all but those who truly sought Him, the fact that it made sense to Him would be all the justification He'd require. We would have to adapt to His reasons, and not the other way around.

From there, I got to thinking about how ants and humans interact. They don't. They just interfere with each other. We keep accidently stepping on them, and they keep taking inappropriate notice of our picnics and kitchen counters. And so it's almost hard to prove to an ant that we're even real. They see our acts, the things we create, but they don't really see us. They could even invent a bunch of bizarre rationalizations for why a field became a strip mall, if they cared to put their little hive-minds to it.

But the analogy does not hold, because of scale. We're too close to ants in scale. Ants could interact with us if we only spoke in pheronomes instead of words. And really, they see us just fine when we plop a finger down in their paths.

Which led me to think of microbes. At that difference in scale, I found a much better analogy. Microbes literally don't know we exist. They share the world with us, and we can affect their lives with heat and pharmaceuticals and light, but we cannot step on them and they cannot steal our food. We live in different worlds, even as we share the same world. We can ferment milk to feed the microbes we like, or incinerate our meat to off a bunch of microbes we don't like, but we're never going to amuse ourselves by making a moat around a microbe-hill.

And that seemed a lot more like our relationship to God. The scale of our relationship is just more massively different than any other relationship I can describe.

But why stop imagining just there? :-)

More than merely being generic microbes, we are cells. Each of us is different, and we were meant to colonize with each other. We are meant to come together, with all our uniqueness in full bloom. Then, when we are all assembled, we will be a body - a body capable of interacting with God as peer-to-peer, at His scale.

As long as we live alone, we are nothing. We are not even viable tissue when we are alone. But together, here in this womb we call Earth, we are growing and changing. Little fingers are becoming distinct and a heart is beating. We are confused, because we see only the cells nearest to us (and how oddly misshapen they are!), but God sees things at His scale, even if He entered ours once and now understands it. He sees what we each are becoming, but He also sees what He is making us together, and He is patient in ways we cannot imagine. He'll wait until His perfect goal for us is fully realized.

One day the sons of God will be revealed.

The Miracle of Kindness

You know the story. John and Peter are a little short on silver and gold, so they heal the lame man at the beautiful gate of the temple. They give credit to the Messiah, which aggravates the local Jews, spend a little time in prison, and come out
swinging. The church's ranks swell as a direct result of this miracle, and of the decision to keep doing miracles like this far and wide to publicize the gospel.

Acts 4 tells us this was part of a conscious strategy. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit all agreed and did His part with the apostles for the purpose of conquering the world for the kingdom. They did miracles to extend the message of the kingdom.

Peter and John did not give the lame man the greater, spiritual treasure of the gospel. No, instead they settled for the pedestrian application of a little healing. They left his spirit withered and useless while they restored his dying legs to fleeting life.

We are much wiser than this. We give people the true riches of the gospel. We give them words, 4 spiritual laws, the law and sin, redemption, the bridge analogy, the Romans Road. Is it our fault if they are all too hard-hearted to know a good thing when they receive it? Besides, God doesn't seem to pass out free healings with every trip to the temple like He used to.

But what if we're dead wrong?

What if we are supposed to be doing greater works than healing lame beggars? What if we are supposed to be doing great works of love instead of just healing for the beggars in our neighborhoods? What if love, given freely to the normal people who mow their lawns right next door to us, is as great a miracle as healing the lame, and able to bring the power of an invisible kingdom to Earth? What if giving money, time and attention to the people all around us is the work of evangelism in our time?

Acts 4:29 & 30
Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.