[Here is the version, written for my column in the Community Press newspapers of suburban Cincinnati.]
When I was growing up, one family of comments regularly made by my elders was sure to cause me to roll my eyes all the way to the back of my head.
It included such gems as these:
“Time sure does go by, doesn’t it?”
Or, “You certainly are growing up.”
Or, “It’s amazing that you’re already seven [or ten, or fifteen, or twenty].”
These comments and others like them were all delivered with the same disbelief that Chicago Cubs fans would feel today if you told them that finally, in the Year 2163, their team will win a World Series.
It seemed to me the most obvious thing in the world that time went by and that people aged.
But lately, I’ve begun to think that all those comments weren’t so dumb after all.
Our son, who will be 24 in a few months, is graduating from college and is working for a time before heading off to graduate school. He’s seeing a wonderful young woman; they're obviously crazy for each other.
Our daughter is twenty, a college sophomore who, last year, spent eight months working with the Walt Disney World College program for which she now acts as a campus representative. In June, she and a fine young man from Virginia will be married.
But I can hardly believe it. The time surely has gone by quickly.
Some of the writers of the Bible noticed time’s rapid passage and wrote about it. They did so bravely, with a sense of joy in spite of time's advancement. The prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament writes, “All people are grass...The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” (Isaiah 40:6-8)
Here, the prophet was making a bold decision, embodying the great nevertheless of faith. “Time is going by, human fashions come and go” he said, “but I’m going to throw in with God. I know that my life here will ebb to an end. But I stand with the God Whose word made the world and Who’ll be standing long after the world has disappeared,”
James Taylor once sang, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” That’s true as far as it goes, I think. But much depends on how you enjoy the passage of time.
We can try to enjoy it by taking an “eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die” approach. The problem with that is that no matter how happy we may deem ourselves in this life style, we still end up dead and separated from God.
Or we can throw in with the God we know through Jesus Christ, the God Who will give life and purpose and true joy to our time and to our eternity.
I’ve tried living life both ways. And to be honest, my life with Christ these past twenty-seven years or so hasn’t been marked by constancy. I’ve flirted with walking away from God, momentarily caving into the allurements of life lived apart from God. Followers of Christ are like recovering alcoholics: For as long as we live here on earth, we’re apt to “fall off the wagon” or fight the cravings to do so. But God is faithful and constant.
He remembers, as the Old Testament says, that we are dust.
He’s slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Time may go by quickly. But God is in a relationship with us for the long haul. We just have to ask Him to let us walk with Him each day.
I’ve found that having Him around makes the passage of time not only easier to bear, but also more purposeful, more joyful.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
The 'Mystery' of Time and Learning to Enjoy It
When I was growing up, one family of comments regularly made by my parents, grandparents, and other elders was sure to cause me to roll my eyes all the way to the back of my head.
It included such gems as these:
These comments and others like them were all delivered with the same sense of wonder and mystification that must have been felt by the Israelites when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with that peculiar glow on his face...Or the same disbelief that Chicago Cubs fans would feel today if you told them that finally, in the Year 2163, their team would win a World Series.
It seemed to me the most obvious thing in the world that time went by and that people aged. I thought a bit disdainfully that my elders’ comments had all the profundity of saying that water is wet. “Of course, time moves on and kids grow up,” I thought. “It’s been going on for generations.” Duh!
All I had to do was consider the wrinkled, blue-haired high school classmates of my grandmother, who she still called “Girls.” Clearly, they must have lived a long while before I hit the scene, all the way back to the ancient age when they really were girls. There was no mystery about the passage of time to me. Why was it such a surprise to my elders?
But lately, I’ve begun to think that all those comments weren’t so dumb after all.
Time does go by...and quickly.
Children grow up...and faster than I did, it seems.
Where did the time go? I’m surprised that children I’ve baptized are coming into their early twenties. Children I instructed in Confirmation classes are in college or graduated, in military service, or generally, just living their adult lives. A young man from our church, once involved in our youth group, has been helping me teach Confirmation this year. And he’s twenty-seven, married, about to become a father.
Of course, as deeply as I care about the people of the two churches I’ve served as a pastor these past twenty-one years, the passage of time hits me particularly forcefully when I consider my wife and kids. By now, I’ve been married almost thirty-one years.
Our son, who will be 24 in a few months, is graduating from college next week and is working for a time before heading off to graduate school. He’s seeing a wonderful young woman who has been visiting with us for the past two days and in spite of her leaving only a few hours ago, he just told me, “I miss her.”
Our daughter, sweet and independent-minded, is twenty, a college sophomore who, last year, spent eight months working with the Walt Disney World College program for which she now acts as a campus representative. In June, she and a fine young man from Virginia will be married. They’re considering moving to Florida, which I think would be a good thing for them to do.
But I can hardly believe it. The time surely has gone by quickly.
Some of the writers of the Bible noticed time’s rapid passage and wrote about it. Almost all who did so seemed to take a clear-eyed inventory of their own advancing years and the implications of that, followed by a decision about how they would live through whatever time they had. The prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament is representative of this when he writes, “All people are grass...The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” (Isaiah 40:6-8)
Here, the prophet was making a bold decision, embodying the great nevertheless of faith. “Time is going by,” he said, “but I’m going to throw in with God. I know that my life here will ebb to an end. But I stand with the God Whose word made the world and Who’ll be standing long after the world has disappeared,”
James Taylor once sang, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” That’s true as far as it goes, I think. But much depends on how you enjoy the passage of time.
We can try to enjoy it by taking an “eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die” approach. The problem with that is it’s marked by a desperation and selfishness that in ultimately, not enjoyable. No matter how happy we may deem ourselves in this life style, we still end up dead and separated from God.
Or we can throw in with the God we know through Jesus Christ, the God Who will give life and purpose and true joy to our time and to our eternity. This is a truly joyful life that lasts forever.
I’ve tried living life both ways. And to be honest, my life with Christ these past twenty-seven years or so hasn’t been marked by constancy. I’ve flirted with walking away from God, momentarily caving into the allurements of life lived apart from God. Followers of Christ are like recovering alcoholics: For as long as we live here on earth, we’re apt to “fall off the wagon” or fight the cravings to do so. But God is faithful and constant.
He remembers, as the Old Testament says, that we are dust.
He’s slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Time may go by quickly. But God is in a relationship with us for the long haul. We just have to ask Him to let us walk with Him each day.
I’ve found that having Him around makes the passage of time not only easier to bear, but also more purposeful, more joyful.
It included such gems as these:
“Time sure does go by, doesn’t it?”
Or, “You certainly are growing up.”
Or, “It’s amazing that you’re already seven [or ten, or fifteen, or twenty].”
These comments and others like them were all delivered with the same sense of wonder and mystification that must have been felt by the Israelites when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with that peculiar glow on his face...Or the same disbelief that Chicago Cubs fans would feel today if you told them that finally, in the Year 2163, their team would win a World Series.
It seemed to me the most obvious thing in the world that time went by and that people aged. I thought a bit disdainfully that my elders’ comments had all the profundity of saying that water is wet. “Of course, time moves on and kids grow up,” I thought. “It’s been going on for generations.” Duh!
All I had to do was consider the wrinkled, blue-haired high school classmates of my grandmother, who she still called “Girls.” Clearly, they must have lived a long while before I hit the scene, all the way back to the ancient age when they really were girls. There was no mystery about the passage of time to me. Why was it such a surprise to my elders?
But lately, I’ve begun to think that all those comments weren’t so dumb after all.
Time does go by...and quickly.
Children grow up...and faster than I did, it seems.
Where did the time go? I’m surprised that children I’ve baptized are coming into their early twenties. Children I instructed in Confirmation classes are in college or graduated, in military service, or generally, just living their adult lives. A young man from our church, once involved in our youth group, has been helping me teach Confirmation this year. And he’s twenty-seven, married, about to become a father.
Of course, as deeply as I care about the people of the two churches I’ve served as a pastor these past twenty-one years, the passage of time hits me particularly forcefully when I consider my wife and kids. By now, I’ve been married almost thirty-one years.
Our son, who will be 24 in a few months, is graduating from college next week and is working for a time before heading off to graduate school. He’s seeing a wonderful young woman who has been visiting with us for the past two days and in spite of her leaving only a few hours ago, he just told me, “I miss her.”
Our daughter, sweet and independent-minded, is twenty, a college sophomore who, last year, spent eight months working with the Walt Disney World College program for which she now acts as a campus representative. In June, she and a fine young man from Virginia will be married. They’re considering moving to Florida, which I think would be a good thing for them to do.
But I can hardly believe it. The time surely has gone by quickly.
Some of the writers of the Bible noticed time’s rapid passage and wrote about it. Almost all who did so seemed to take a clear-eyed inventory of their own advancing years and the implications of that, followed by a decision about how they would live through whatever time they had. The prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament is representative of this when he writes, “All people are grass...The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” (Isaiah 40:6-8)
Here, the prophet was making a bold decision, embodying the great nevertheless of faith. “Time is going by,” he said, “but I’m going to throw in with God. I know that my life here will ebb to an end. But I stand with the God Whose word made the world and Who’ll be standing long after the world has disappeared,”
James Taylor once sang, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” That’s true as far as it goes, I think. But much depends on how you enjoy the passage of time.
We can try to enjoy it by taking an “eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die” approach. The problem with that is it’s marked by a desperation and selfishness that in ultimately, not enjoyable. No matter how happy we may deem ourselves in this life style, we still end up dead and separated from God.
Or we can throw in with the God we know through Jesus Christ, the God Who will give life and purpose and true joy to our time and to our eternity. This is a truly joyful life that lasts forever.
I’ve tried living life both ways. And to be honest, my life with Christ these past twenty-seven years or so hasn’t been marked by constancy. I’ve flirted with walking away from God, momentarily caving into the allurements of life lived apart from God. Followers of Christ are like recovering alcoholics: For as long as we live here on earth, we’re apt to “fall off the wagon” or fight the cravings to do so. But God is faithful and constant.
He remembers, as the Old Testament says, that we are dust.
He’s slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Time may go by quickly. But God is in a relationship with us for the long haul. We just have to ask Him to let us walk with Him each day.
I’ve found that having Him around makes the passage of time not only easier to bear, but also more purposeful, more joyful.
Tod Takes a Swing at a Little Bit of Everything
Tod Bolsinger is spraying to all fields...and I'm grateful that he hit one of my pitches!
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Tierney Goes to Chile to Study Social Security Reform
As the Senate Finance Committee begins to consider what to do about Social Security, New York Times columnist John Tierney has interesting anecdotal evidence on private retirement accounts from a friend in Chile, where they've had them f0r years. The President has suggested that private accounts are a good idea. Democrats disagree. Republicans appear divided on the issue. Interesting stuff.
Check Out Craig's 'Musings' on Narnian Chronicles
Craig Williams, who may love C.S. Lewis 'Chronicles of Narnia' series as much as I do, is writing a series of 'musings' on them for his blog. Check out Craig's site here. The Chronicles are too rich to be read only by children!
Organization Provides Education to Help Grieving Families
Today, my brother links to the story of The Three Little Angels Foundation, an organization that educates those in the medical community on how to help parents and families afflicted with the loss of little ones. A friend of his is also raising money in support of the foundation.
Soldier's Story Shows Importance of Family, Love, Faith
Jay Briseno was an Army reservist serving in Iraq when, in June, 2003, he was wounded and as a result, became paralyzed. Tonight on the NewsHour, reporter Susan Dentzer shared the poignant story of Jay's life these days and of the loving care he receives each day from his parents. It was a fantastic piece of journalism that took no position on the war, but allowed us to see how one family is coping with having a son who is, by Army accounts, the most severely wounded veteran of the War in Iraq. The transcript and audio can be found here.
The report provides insight into the unique griefs borne by the families of severely wounded veterans, as well as the pride they feel in their loved-ones' sacrifices and heroism.
For those inclined to think that religious faith is passe, the Briseno family offer disarming testimony to the contrary. From the transcript:
It was moving to see the smile of Jay Briseno's face as he received the Sacrament and the blessing offered by this deacon from his church.
Tonight, before I go to sleep, I'll be saying a prayer, asking God to give strength to the Briseno family and thanking Him for their example!
[Kudos to Dentzer and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer for this outstanding report!]
The report provides insight into the unique griefs borne by the families of severely wounded veterans, as well as the pride they feel in their loved-ones' sacrifices and heroism.
For those inclined to think that religious faith is passe, the Briseno family offer disarming testimony to the contrary. From the transcript:
SUSAN DENTZER: The Brisenos told us their abiding religious belief gets them through, as does support from their local Roman Catholic Church. Three times a week, Dick O'Connell, a church deacon, visits the Briseno home to bring communion to Jay.
It was moving to see the smile of Jay Briseno's face as he received the Sacrament and the blessing offered by this deacon from his church.
Tonight, before I go to sleep, I'll be saying a prayer, asking God to give strength to the Briseno family and thanking Him for their example!
[Kudos to Dentzer and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer for this outstanding report!]
Monday, April 25, 2005
What Exactly Happens in Holy Baptism?
[Our congregation is currently involved in Forty Days of Purpose, a campaign of spiritual renewal that is built around daily readings from Rick Warren's fantastic book, The Purpose Driven Life. Today is Day 16 of the campaign and yesterday, the readings included several pages on Holy Baptism. It's one of the few passages of Warren's wonderful book where he presents a theological point that is specific to his own denominational tradtion and not something to which all believers in Christ would give their assent. As a pastor, charged with teaching my congregation, I felt compelled to present a Lutheran perspective. I present the email in which I did this, not as a way of engaging in conflict, but just to present a slightly different point of view.]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Friend:
As I have said for several years, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren is a fantastic book! I hope that you agree and that you're finding it helpful in your walk of faith.
But there are occasional points in Warren's book where I disagree with him. Nowhere is this more true than in his discussion of Baptism.
Warren, who is Southern Baptist, views Baptism as something believers do to initiate their relationship with Christ. This is why his denomination upholds the notion of "believer's baptism," in which a person must be old enough to understand the Gospel and their need for Christ before being baptized.
Warren and his denomination also view Baptism as being more symbolic, whereas we believe that in it, the Holy Spirit truly comes to us, enters us, and adopts us as God's children.
Lutherans, we would say, take a more sacramental view of Baptism. That is, we see it as something that God initiates and over which we have no control. God acts decisively for us in an act of grace. In Baptism, God adopts us just as He once adopted Jewish babies at eight days old through circumcision (an analogy that Saint Paul draws in Romans 6). Through water connected to God's Word and by Christ's command, the benefits of Jesus' death and resurrection become ours. Baptism marks new birth (John 3:3) and we can readily draw the conclusion from reading the history of the first century church, as found in Acts, that the "whole households" that were baptized included children who would not have been able to say yes or no to God's salvation offered through Jesus.
Of course, for Baptists and for Lutherans, the ultimate issue is whether one believes in Jesus Christ. This is why Lutherans and other Christian traditions have the rite of confirmation, the point at which young persons--usually those between ages fourteen and sixteen--may publicly declare their intention to live in faithfulness to the covenant God struck with them as infants. At Baptism, God promised to be their God. He calls us to faithfully respond to His undeserved love, grace, and forgiveness through a commitment to be His disciples. We can spurn the salvation God has given to us through Christ, mediated to us through Baptism. God allows us to reject Christ and life, even if we have been baptized. So, even though it's a sacrament in which we believe God acts for us, God still respects our right to say, "No" to Him and we must still believe in Jesus. (John 3:16)
Both Baptists and Lutherans would point to the words of Jesus found in the Gospel of Mark: "The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:16) For all true Christians then, the pivotal issue when it comes to salvation is faith and in that sense, there is very little distance between us and Warren.
__________________________________________________________________________
In today's reading, Warren says that the first four of the Ten Commandments deal with our relationship with God and the latter six deal with our relationships with others. This must have seemed odd to many of you.
Lutherans and others reckon the commandments differently. We split them three dealing with our God-relationship and seven with our neighbor-relationships. That's because we combine two in the "first table" into one commandment and others combine our two "covet commands," nine and ten, into one command. In spite of those differences, we manage to include all the same stuff in our renderings of the Ten Commandments.
__________________________________________________________________________
I hope that you're getting as much out of this Forty Days of Purpose as I am and that God will use it to deepen our faith and help us all to live for God's purposes for our lives!
Blessings in Christ,
Mark
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Friend:
As I have said for several years, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren is a fantastic book! I hope that you agree and that you're finding it helpful in your walk of faith.
But there are occasional points in Warren's book where I disagree with him. Nowhere is this more true than in his discussion of Baptism.
Warren, who is Southern Baptist, views Baptism as something believers do to initiate their relationship with Christ. This is why his denomination upholds the notion of "believer's baptism," in which a person must be old enough to understand the Gospel and their need for Christ before being baptized.
Warren and his denomination also view Baptism as being more symbolic, whereas we believe that in it, the Holy Spirit truly comes to us, enters us, and adopts us as God's children.
Lutherans, we would say, take a more sacramental view of Baptism. That is, we see it as something that God initiates and over which we have no control. God acts decisively for us in an act of grace. In Baptism, God adopts us just as He once adopted Jewish babies at eight days old through circumcision (an analogy that Saint Paul draws in Romans 6). Through water connected to God's Word and by Christ's command, the benefits of Jesus' death and resurrection become ours. Baptism marks new birth (John 3:3) and we can readily draw the conclusion from reading the history of the first century church, as found in Acts, that the "whole households" that were baptized included children who would not have been able to say yes or no to God's salvation offered through Jesus.
Of course, for Baptists and for Lutherans, the ultimate issue is whether one believes in Jesus Christ. This is why Lutherans and other Christian traditions have the rite of confirmation, the point at which young persons--usually those between ages fourteen and sixteen--may publicly declare their intention to live in faithfulness to the covenant God struck with them as infants. At Baptism, God promised to be their God. He calls us to faithfully respond to His undeserved love, grace, and forgiveness through a commitment to be His disciples. We can spurn the salvation God has given to us through Christ, mediated to us through Baptism. God allows us to reject Christ and life, even if we have been baptized. So, even though it's a sacrament in which we believe God acts for us, God still respects our right to say, "No" to Him and we must still believe in Jesus. (John 3:16)
Both Baptists and Lutherans would point to the words of Jesus found in the Gospel of Mark: "The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:16) For all true Christians then, the pivotal issue when it comes to salvation is faith and in that sense, there is very little distance between us and Warren.
__________________________________________________________________________
In today's reading, Warren says that the first four of the Ten Commandments deal with our relationship with God and the latter six deal with our relationships with others. This must have seemed odd to many of you.
Lutherans and others reckon the commandments differently. We split them three dealing with our God-relationship and seven with our neighbor-relationships. That's because we combine two in the "first table" into one commandment and others combine our two "covet commands," nine and ten, into one command. In spite of those differences, we manage to include all the same stuff in our renderings of the Ten Commandments.
__________________________________________________________________________
I hope that you're getting as much out of this Forty Days of Purpose as I am and that God will use it to deepen our faith and help us all to live for God's purposes for our lives!
Blessings in Christ,
Mark
Leadership Lessons from Pat Brown...and More
Whether LA Times columnist George Skelton is right in using it to criticize California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, his profile of late Governor Pat Brown is fun to read. I loved this observation:
The final sentence is probably true for any leader in any context.
It's a tough thing for leaders to remember. After all, whether the leader is a governor, CEO, agency director, or even a pastor, the appointment initially comes because a constituency, decision-making body, board, or voters have expressed their support. The Sally Field Effect can cause the leader to think that because they've been voted in, "They love me. They really love me," in perpetuity.
If you're a leader and do your job, even if you do it well, often because you do it well, you'll frequently lose some measure of support.
Take British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for example. The scuttlebutt from Rob of Under the Sun is that British voters are perfectly pleased to vote for Blair in order to retain Gordon Brown as chancellor of the exchequer. Brown is credited with the current strength of the British economy and Blair's occupancy of 10 Downing Street is seen as the unfortunate price to be paid for the chancellor's continued service. I saw a BBC interview with Blair that aired on C-Span last night. In it, he made the observation that the better one gets at being prime minister, the less popular the PM is likely to be. In other words, it takes time to get the hang of the job and by the time you do, you're likely to have expended lots of political capital that could have been put to more effective use.
Even granting that there's more than a little self-service in Blair's comment, there is some validity to it.
That's why it becomes all the more important for political leaders in these times of media-saturation to use their political capital earlier rather than later. Twenty-four hour news cycles, cable news networks, and varied Internet sources of information and opinion give all public figures more tenuous, often severely shortened, shelf-lives. At the very least, it constricts the timelines political leaders have to address issues before being voted off of the island or worse yet, being ignored.
This is especially true for Presidents of the United States, who are term-limited and who operate in the era of the perpetual presidential campaign. C-Span has already begun its Sunday program, Road to the White House, 2008 and it sometimes seems that the presidency of George W. Bush is a fading memory.
I'm convinced that one of the many reasons President Bush has been unable to advance the cause or even the notion of Social Security reform in spite of stating that he intended to spend his political capital in the pursuit of this end, is that in post-modern political terms, he's already a lame duck.
A second term president may have popularity, but in terms of influence, possesses vastly diminished power. Power is much more than Constitutional and legal perquisites; it's that combination of political support, future shelf life, a leader's native communication skills, and legally-assigned authority that give a leader the clout to get things done.
In Bush's case, a Republican Senate, intent on placating the religious conservatives they feel they need, may successfully trash the filibuster when it comes to judicial nominations, paving the way for the President's court appointments and making Mr. Bush happy. But the Republican Congress doesn't seem likely to pass any Social Security reform program, at least along the lines Mr. Bush has discussed. It also is at this time, questionable whether the President's appointment of John Bolton to be UN ambassador is going to make it. The point is that the Republican members of Congress see themselves as pols with a future and they're not sticking their necks out for a President slated to pick up stakes and head back to Crawford on January 20, 2009.
Barring the unlikely reversal of presidential term limits with the passage of another Constitutional amendment, this problem will likely continue to dog future presidents.
But there are two lessons every leader must learn.
First, like Pat Brown, California's one-time governor, use your political capital to get things done.
Second, do it early, while you have that capital.
To earn a legacy of greatness, a governor must do truly great deeds that directly affect people — currently and in the future. Spend [political] capital, but not on the frivolous.
The final sentence is probably true for any leader in any context.
It's a tough thing for leaders to remember. After all, whether the leader is a governor, CEO, agency director, or even a pastor, the appointment initially comes because a constituency, decision-making body, board, or voters have expressed their support. The Sally Field Effect can cause the leader to think that because they've been voted in, "They love me. They really love me," in perpetuity.
If you're a leader and do your job, even if you do it well, often because you do it well, you'll frequently lose some measure of support.
Take British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for example. The scuttlebutt from Rob of Under the Sun is that British voters are perfectly pleased to vote for Blair in order to retain Gordon Brown as chancellor of the exchequer. Brown is credited with the current strength of the British economy and Blair's occupancy of 10 Downing Street is seen as the unfortunate price to be paid for the chancellor's continued service. I saw a BBC interview with Blair that aired on C-Span last night. In it, he made the observation that the better one gets at being prime minister, the less popular the PM is likely to be. In other words, it takes time to get the hang of the job and by the time you do, you're likely to have expended lots of political capital that could have been put to more effective use.
Even granting that there's more than a little self-service in Blair's comment, there is some validity to it.
That's why it becomes all the more important for political leaders in these times of media-saturation to use their political capital earlier rather than later. Twenty-four hour news cycles, cable news networks, and varied Internet sources of information and opinion give all public figures more tenuous, often severely shortened, shelf-lives. At the very least, it constricts the timelines political leaders have to address issues before being voted off of the island or worse yet, being ignored.
This is especially true for Presidents of the United States, who are term-limited and who operate in the era of the perpetual presidential campaign. C-Span has already begun its Sunday program, Road to the White House, 2008 and it sometimes seems that the presidency of George W. Bush is a fading memory.
I'm convinced that one of the many reasons President Bush has been unable to advance the cause or even the notion of Social Security reform in spite of stating that he intended to spend his political capital in the pursuit of this end, is that in post-modern political terms, he's already a lame duck.
A second term president may have popularity, but in terms of influence, possesses vastly diminished power. Power is much more than Constitutional and legal perquisites; it's that combination of political support, future shelf life, a leader's native communication skills, and legally-assigned authority that give a leader the clout to get things done.
In Bush's case, a Republican Senate, intent on placating the religious conservatives they feel they need, may successfully trash the filibuster when it comes to judicial nominations, paving the way for the President's court appointments and making Mr. Bush happy. But the Republican Congress doesn't seem likely to pass any Social Security reform program, at least along the lines Mr. Bush has discussed. It also is at this time, questionable whether the President's appointment of John Bolton to be UN ambassador is going to make it. The point is that the Republican members of Congress see themselves as pols with a future and they're not sticking their necks out for a President slated to pick up stakes and head back to Crawford on January 20, 2009.
Barring the unlikely reversal of presidential term limits with the passage of another Constitutional amendment, this problem will likely continue to dog future presidents.
But there are two lessons every leader must learn.
First, like Pat Brown, California's one-time governor, use your political capital to get things done.
Second, do it early, while you have that capital.
Putin's Disturbing View of History
Vladimir Putin, the one-time Soviet spy, now president of Russia, apparently waxes nostalgic for the "good old days" of the Soviet Union. An article from CBC reports this about a Putin speech delivered to both houses of the Russian Parliament:
and
In one paragraph, Putin describes the end of Communist control of Russia and its enslaved republics as a "catastrophe" apparently outranking such twentieth century tragedies as World War Two and the Holocaust, World War One, and the worldwide depression of the late twenties and thirties, to name just a few events that might rightly be seen as "catastrophes." I might also add the Bolshevik Revolution, the Stalin reign of terror, and seventy years of a Soviet regime as great catastrophes as well. Far from being a catastrophe, the collapse of the Soviet Union is a legitimate cause for rejoicing, except among those who like authoritarianism.
In the second paragraph, Putin seems to be creating the case for Russian military adventurism. Remember that someone named Hitler undergirded his case for invading other countries not only to give Germany "liebensraum," but also to bring into one nation all those Germanic peoples scattered around Europe. Putin, whose popularity has been sagging of late, appears to be appealing to Russian nationalism in the same manner Hitler appealed to German nationalism.
If Putin's statement is simply a bit of red meat thrown at a society bristling under various "reforms" imposed by his regime and looking back fondly on Czarist and Soviet authoritarianism, he's playing a dangerous game. He could very well fuel expectations and movements toward the "bad old days" which, once incited, he might not be able to contain. Frankly, I doubt that he wants to contain them.
I agree with Glenn Reynolds, who cites the CBC article at Instapundit, we need to watch this guy. Great care must be taken that we not become so focused on terrorism that we forget the very real threat to world peace and stability represented by nation states with hegemonic ambitions. In that category I would include Russia and China.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was "the greatest political catastrophe of
the last century," Russian president Vladimir Putin said Monday as he delivered
his annual state of the nation address.
and
The former KGB agent said the 1991 breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics was a "true drama" that left tens of millions of Russian people
living outside Russia, in breakaway republics formerly under Soviet control.
In one paragraph, Putin describes the end of Communist control of Russia and its enslaved republics as a "catastrophe" apparently outranking such twentieth century tragedies as World War Two and the Holocaust, World War One, and the worldwide depression of the late twenties and thirties, to name just a few events that might rightly be seen as "catastrophes." I might also add the Bolshevik Revolution, the Stalin reign of terror, and seventy years of a Soviet regime as great catastrophes as well. Far from being a catastrophe, the collapse of the Soviet Union is a legitimate cause for rejoicing, except among those who like authoritarianism.
In the second paragraph, Putin seems to be creating the case for Russian military adventurism. Remember that someone named Hitler undergirded his case for invading other countries not only to give Germany "liebensraum," but also to bring into one nation all those Germanic peoples scattered around Europe. Putin, whose popularity has been sagging of late, appears to be appealing to Russian nationalism in the same manner Hitler appealed to German nationalism.
If Putin's statement is simply a bit of red meat thrown at a society bristling under various "reforms" imposed by his regime and looking back fondly on Czarist and Soviet authoritarianism, he's playing a dangerous game. He could very well fuel expectations and movements toward the "bad old days" which, once incited, he might not be able to contain. Frankly, I doubt that he wants to contain them.
I agree with Glenn Reynolds, who cites the CBC article at Instapundit, we need to watch this guy. Great care must be taken that we not become so focused on terrorism that we forget the very real threat to world peace and stability represented by nation states with hegemonic ambitions. In that category I would include Russia and China.
Coyote Sightings and Our Whacked-Out Priorities
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, says that his neighborhood email list has carried reports of coyote sightings in his Knoxville-area community.
For several years now, my wife has been spotting coyotes from the window of the suburban Cincinnati elementary school library where she works.
And about a week-and-a-half ago, I saw a coyote standing along I-75 in the Sharonville area, one of the most densely-populated and commercially busy sections of metropolitan Cincinnati.
Some will undoubtedly view these sightings as encouraging signs of success in efforts to re-establish a species in places where it had once disappeared. But frankly, I'm an anthropocentric human and I don't like the idea of our cities and suburbs becoming cozy habitats for predators.
It's one of the enduring ironies of this era that we expend all sorts of energy, time, money, and concern on various species of the animal kingdom, but can't shake off our indifference to abortion, euthanasia, systemic poverty, or the AIDs epidemic, all enormous threats to human beings.
For several years now, my wife has been spotting coyotes from the window of the suburban Cincinnati elementary school library where she works.
And about a week-and-a-half ago, I saw a coyote standing along I-75 in the Sharonville area, one of the most densely-populated and commercially busy sections of metropolitan Cincinnati.
Some will undoubtedly view these sightings as encouraging signs of success in efforts to re-establish a species in places where it had once disappeared. But frankly, I'm an anthropocentric human and I don't like the idea of our cities and suburbs becoming cozy habitats for predators.
It's one of the enduring ironies of this era that we expend all sorts of energy, time, money, and concern on various species of the animal kingdom, but can't shake off our indifference to abortion, euthanasia, systemic poverty, or the AIDs epidemic, all enormous threats to human beings.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Thinking of Seeing 'Kung Fu Hustle'?
You might want to spare yourself the agony by checking out my brother's review first.
Forty Days of Purpose: Loving God's Family
Colossians 3:12-17
John 13:31-35
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 24, 2005)
About ten years ago, our now twenty-four year old son and I were walking with my father on the street where I grew up in Columbus. My folks had moved out of the house in which we’d lived and taken up residence in my grandparents’ old place, just seven doors down, on the same street. We were walking toward my boyhood home, tracing the same steps I used to take in my walks home from junior and senior high each day.
I couldn't help remembering those earlier walks. As some of you know, my adolescent years were pretty horrible for me. I was obnoxious and had a penchant for rubbing all of my classmates the wrong way. The result was that many afternoons of my junior high years, I was in a fight with two to five other guys. During senior high, I had almost no friends until I hit the twelfth grade. At the end of another hard school day, it was always a relief to walk down my street.
On my later walk, I turned to my Dad and my son and said, “You know, when I was a kid, walking home from school each day, this street seemed to be the most perfect place in the world to me.”
God invented the family to be an oasis of support, encouragement, and discipline to us as we grow up. That’s why it saddens me to know that so many children come home from school in the afternoons to empty houses or houses in which parents or others subject them to abuse. That’s also why I believe so much in the mission and work of the Boys and Girls Club of Clermont County. For a few hours each day, young people who might not otherwise hear an affirming word or receive help for their homework are shown, if I might put it this way, how much they matter in the eyes of God. No wonder one of the kids at the New Richmond club once said, “Walking into the club is like walking into a church.”
That young person was onto something. The Church is meant to be an oasis of support, encouragement, and discipline for followers of Jesus Christ as we grow up and mature. The Church is the family of God and all who follow Christ are privileged to be part of it. Last week, we talked about the first purpose of our lives: to worship God with our whole beings. God created the Church to help us fulfill the second great purpose of our lives: To live and grow within the fellowship of God’s family.
Fellowship is a lot more than having coffee and cookies or cake after worship on Sunday mornings. Fellowship is being God’s family together. The Bible makes it clear that being part of this family is so important that if we fail to be an active part of it, there is no way our life can ever be what God intended for it to be.
The New Testament calls the Church Christ’s body and each of us portions of it. Some people like to say, “I can be just as good a Christian apart from the church as I can be with it.” Well, maybe, but I’m not so sure. You see, as impossible as it would be for a toe or an arm to function without the rest of the body, we are dysfunctional without a vital connection to Christ’s body, the Church.
This idea violates our human pride, our desires to be self-sufficient. But I think it’s true. I’ve rarely seen people grow in their faith or mature as people who weren’t active participants in the life of a church.
Those of us who stand apart from Christ and the Church remind me of what our church's little ones used to say when she was much younger and didn’t want help: “Mine-a do it.” People who insist on “Mine-a do it” living never fulfill their life purposes. In blunt terms, we need each other. We need the fellowship of God’s family. That entails making a commitment of love to the people of our church.
Why is that so important to God? I think that there are three reasons. Let me explain.
I read once about a man who had an out-of-town business meeting. His flight was later that day and all of his suits needed dry-cleaning. He didn’t know what to do and then remembered seeing on the other side of town, a place with a big neon sign that read, One Hour Dry Cleaning. So, he packed everything but his suits and dashed to the place. After filling out the paperwork, handing over his suits, and paying up, the clerk said, “It’ll be ready tomorrow.” “But your sign says, One Hour Dry Cleaning!” the guy replied. “That’s only the name of the place,” the clerk told him, “we can’t have your suits done before tomorrow.”
In our second Bible lesson, part of an incident that happened just before Jesus was arrested, Jesus says to His followers, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
It wouldn’t matter if we hung neon signs around our necks saying we were Christians, if people saw that we were indifferent to those in our church family, it would just be one more example of false advertising.
When people see us truly caring about each other, it authenticates that the risen Jesus is living in and among us. That's the first reason God wants those of us who are part of the church to love one another. The New Testament book of Acts tells us that the early church grew as people remarked, “See how they love each other.” When people see Christians living the love of Jesus, they want to be part of God’s family too.
Another reason that God wants us to love His family, the Church, is that God doesn’t want us to be babies in our faith. He calls us to grow up. The Church is the family in which we help one another grow. And the growing never stops, no matter how old we may be.
In a recent book he wrote with his wife, Barbara, Pastor David Sorenson talks about Lawrence, a ninety-two year old whose wife had recently died. Sorenson visited Lawrence one day and Lawrence complained that few people came by to see him any more. Instead of surreptitiously arranging for a stream of visitors to come see Lawrence, Sorenson came up with a better idea. Because Lawrence still had his driver’s license, Sorenson asked him if he would take the upcoming Sunday’s worship bulletins to people unable to attend. That way, they could follow along with the service as they listened to it being broadcast on a local radio station. Ordinarily, Sorenson explained, they would have mailed the bulletins, but he told Lawrence that a personal visit from him would lift people’s spirits.
Two years later, Sorenson came to see Lawrence, who was dying. From his death bed. Lawrence thanked him for the ministry Sorenson had given him to do. Within the family of God, in a ministry of love for other followers of Jesus, his faith in Christ had grown. Even at age 92! So, God wants us to be actively involved in fellowship with others in the Church to authenticate our faith in Christ and to help us grow in our faith in Christ.
There is a third reason. We see this in the true story I call, ‘Multiplying Mocha.’ It happened at a drive-through coffee shop in Portland, Oregon. A customer asked to pay not only for her own mocha, but also for the mocha of the person behind her. The owner who had taken the order smiled as she told the next customer that her mocha was free. The second customer was so happy that she paid for the coffee of the next person in line. This string of kindnesses went on for two hours and twenty-seven customers.
So, what’s the point? Just this: When you live love, generosity, forgiveness, and kindness, it has a way of multiplying.
When you consider it, the commandment that Jesus gave on the night of His arrest is sort of strange. He made a big point of calling it a “new commandment,” that we in the Church learn to love each other. But months before, Jesus had summarized all the Old Testament laws--by then, thousands of years old--by giving the Great Commandment: Love God and love neighbor. What was so new about this new commandment?
Well, have you ever noticed who you treat the most cruelly and with the greatest unkindness? Or who you most take for granted? Isn’t it usually the members of your own family?
The same can be true of our church family. We can start to take each other for granted, like old shoes that may be comfy but beat-up. The habits of our fellow church members, once so endearing, can become annoying and we can start to pick at others or withdraw from spending time together. Jesus says, “Love these folks just like I love you even though you’ve got your own quirks, foibles, and annoying habits.”
If we can learn to love each other in the Church, sharing the love of Christ among us, this love will become a habit. Jesus’ love will multiply from us in the same way the kindness at that coffee shop did one special morning.
Fellowship, loving God’s family, the Church, is the second purpose of our lives.
It’s important because living the love of Jesus will help the world authenticate the truth about Jesus; because under the loving nurture and discipline of the family of God, we grow as people and as believers in Jesus; and because the Church is the laboratory and training ground in which God prepares us for spreading the Good News of forgiveness and hope and new life that belong to all who turn from sin and receive Jesus as through Lord.
May God help us as we learn more about this second purpose of our lives through our readings and our small groups in the coming week.
John 13:31-35
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 24, 2005)
About ten years ago, our now twenty-four year old son and I were walking with my father on the street where I grew up in Columbus. My folks had moved out of the house in which we’d lived and taken up residence in my grandparents’ old place, just seven doors down, on the same street. We were walking toward my boyhood home, tracing the same steps I used to take in my walks home from junior and senior high each day.
I couldn't help remembering those earlier walks. As some of you know, my adolescent years were pretty horrible for me. I was obnoxious and had a penchant for rubbing all of my classmates the wrong way. The result was that many afternoons of my junior high years, I was in a fight with two to five other guys. During senior high, I had almost no friends until I hit the twelfth grade. At the end of another hard school day, it was always a relief to walk down my street.
On my later walk, I turned to my Dad and my son and said, “You know, when I was a kid, walking home from school each day, this street seemed to be the most perfect place in the world to me.”
God invented the family to be an oasis of support, encouragement, and discipline to us as we grow up. That’s why it saddens me to know that so many children come home from school in the afternoons to empty houses or houses in which parents or others subject them to abuse. That’s also why I believe so much in the mission and work of the Boys and Girls Club of Clermont County. For a few hours each day, young people who might not otherwise hear an affirming word or receive help for their homework are shown, if I might put it this way, how much they matter in the eyes of God. No wonder one of the kids at the New Richmond club once said, “Walking into the club is like walking into a church.”
That young person was onto something. The Church is meant to be an oasis of support, encouragement, and discipline for followers of Jesus Christ as we grow up and mature. The Church is the family of God and all who follow Christ are privileged to be part of it. Last week, we talked about the first purpose of our lives: to worship God with our whole beings. God created the Church to help us fulfill the second great purpose of our lives: To live and grow within the fellowship of God’s family.
Fellowship is a lot more than having coffee and cookies or cake after worship on Sunday mornings. Fellowship is being God’s family together. The Bible makes it clear that being part of this family is so important that if we fail to be an active part of it, there is no way our life can ever be what God intended for it to be.
The New Testament calls the Church Christ’s body and each of us portions of it. Some people like to say, “I can be just as good a Christian apart from the church as I can be with it.” Well, maybe, but I’m not so sure. You see, as impossible as it would be for a toe or an arm to function without the rest of the body, we are dysfunctional without a vital connection to Christ’s body, the Church.
This idea violates our human pride, our desires to be self-sufficient. But I think it’s true. I’ve rarely seen people grow in their faith or mature as people who weren’t active participants in the life of a church.
Those of us who stand apart from Christ and the Church remind me of what our church's little ones used to say when she was much younger and didn’t want help: “Mine-a do it.” People who insist on “Mine-a do it” living never fulfill their life purposes. In blunt terms, we need each other. We need the fellowship of God’s family. That entails making a commitment of love to the people of our church.
Why is that so important to God? I think that there are three reasons. Let me explain.
I read once about a man who had an out-of-town business meeting. His flight was later that day and all of his suits needed dry-cleaning. He didn’t know what to do and then remembered seeing on the other side of town, a place with a big neon sign that read, One Hour Dry Cleaning. So, he packed everything but his suits and dashed to the place. After filling out the paperwork, handing over his suits, and paying up, the clerk said, “It’ll be ready tomorrow.” “But your sign says, One Hour Dry Cleaning!” the guy replied. “That’s only the name of the place,” the clerk told him, “we can’t have your suits done before tomorrow.”
In our second Bible lesson, part of an incident that happened just before Jesus was arrested, Jesus says to His followers, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
It wouldn’t matter if we hung neon signs around our necks saying we were Christians, if people saw that we were indifferent to those in our church family, it would just be one more example of false advertising.
When people see us truly caring about each other, it authenticates that the risen Jesus is living in and among us. That's the first reason God wants those of us who are part of the church to love one another. The New Testament book of Acts tells us that the early church grew as people remarked, “See how they love each other.” When people see Christians living the love of Jesus, they want to be part of God’s family too.
Another reason that God wants us to love His family, the Church, is that God doesn’t want us to be babies in our faith. He calls us to grow up. The Church is the family in which we help one another grow. And the growing never stops, no matter how old we may be.
In a recent book he wrote with his wife, Barbara, Pastor David Sorenson talks about Lawrence, a ninety-two year old whose wife had recently died. Sorenson visited Lawrence one day and Lawrence complained that few people came by to see him any more. Instead of surreptitiously arranging for a stream of visitors to come see Lawrence, Sorenson came up with a better idea. Because Lawrence still had his driver’s license, Sorenson asked him if he would take the upcoming Sunday’s worship bulletins to people unable to attend. That way, they could follow along with the service as they listened to it being broadcast on a local radio station. Ordinarily, Sorenson explained, they would have mailed the bulletins, but he told Lawrence that a personal visit from him would lift people’s spirits.
Two years later, Sorenson came to see Lawrence, who was dying. From his death bed. Lawrence thanked him for the ministry Sorenson had given him to do. Within the family of God, in a ministry of love for other followers of Jesus, his faith in Christ had grown. Even at age 92! So, God wants us to be actively involved in fellowship with others in the Church to authenticate our faith in Christ and to help us grow in our faith in Christ.
There is a third reason. We see this in the true story I call, ‘Multiplying Mocha.’ It happened at a drive-through coffee shop in Portland, Oregon. A customer asked to pay not only for her own mocha, but also for the mocha of the person behind her. The owner who had taken the order smiled as she told the next customer that her mocha was free. The second customer was so happy that she paid for the coffee of the next person in line. This string of kindnesses went on for two hours and twenty-seven customers.
So, what’s the point? Just this: When you live love, generosity, forgiveness, and kindness, it has a way of multiplying.
When you consider it, the commandment that Jesus gave on the night of His arrest is sort of strange. He made a big point of calling it a “new commandment,” that we in the Church learn to love each other. But months before, Jesus had summarized all the Old Testament laws--by then, thousands of years old--by giving the Great Commandment: Love God and love neighbor. What was so new about this new commandment?
Well, have you ever noticed who you treat the most cruelly and with the greatest unkindness? Or who you most take for granted? Isn’t it usually the members of your own family?
The same can be true of our church family. We can start to take each other for granted, like old shoes that may be comfy but beat-up. The habits of our fellow church members, once so endearing, can become annoying and we can start to pick at others or withdraw from spending time together. Jesus says, “Love these folks just like I love you even though you’ve got your own quirks, foibles, and annoying habits.”
If we can learn to love each other in the Church, sharing the love of Christ among us, this love will become a habit. Jesus’ love will multiply from us in the same way the kindness at that coffee shop did one special morning.
Fellowship, loving God’s family, the Church, is the second purpose of our lives.
It’s important because living the love of Jesus will help the world authenticate the truth about Jesus; because under the loving nurture and discipline of the family of God, we grow as people and as believers in Jesus; and because the Church is the laboratory and training ground in which God prepares us for spreading the Good News of forgiveness and hope and new life that belong to all who turn from sin and receive Jesus as through Lord.
May God help us as we learn more about this second purpose of our lives through our readings and our small groups in the coming week.
More Glee from NYTimes About the Prospects of Overweight People
For the second consecutive day, a New York Times columnist seems to be in the throes of ecstasy over a recent report indicating that, short of being obese, overweight people live longer than underweight ones. David Brooks explains why the research results so please him:
[Check out an earlier column I wrote about my cackling metabolism thingy.]
Mostly, I'm happy on an existential level. I like to be reminded that the universe is basically crooked. This is what the zero-tolerance brigades and all the better living gurus never quite get. They're busy trying to mold everybody into lifelong valedictorians, who spend their adulthood as carb counters and responsible flossers - the sort of organized folk who actually read legal documents before they sign them.True or not, it is funny, an opportunity for those of us deeply ensconced in middle age to laugh in the face of our expanding waistlines.
In reality, life is perverse and human beings don't get what they deserve. The people with the worst grades start the most successful businesses. The shallowest people end up blissfully happy and they are so vapid they don't even realize how vapid they are because vapidity is the only trait that comes with its own impermeable obliviousness system. The people regarded as lightweights, like F.D.R., J.F.K. and Ronald Reagan, make the best presidents, while you - so much more thoughtful and better read - would be a complete disaster.
[Check out an earlier column I wrote about my cackling metabolism thingy.]
Saturday, April 23, 2005
John Mills and Pluck
Obituaries from both sides of the pond for Sir John Mills are here and here. Mills was a wonderful actor. Like most British performers, he wasn't hung-up on always playing "the right part." He just took gig after gig, the good, the bad, and the otherwise.
You see this approach in other British actors like Michael Caine and Emma Thompson. James Garner and Kevin Bacon are the American actors who most display this penchant for taking on the next job even if it isn't Hamlet and even if the part isn't the starring role.
I admire this. None of us can take star turns everyday. But we can tackle the next thing life puts before us and try to make the best of it. I think that the Brits of Mills' generation would have called it pluck and it's a good thing.
Mills displayed this characteristic not only in his acting career, but more importantly in his personal life. He cared for his wife of more than sixty years after the onset of Alzheimer's Disease and his own worsening blindness.
For me, the one true and boundless source of pluck--the capacity to keep on keepin' on--is God, Who through Jesus Christ promises, "I will never leave you or forsake you." When God has your back, you can take on the next thing, whether it's the starring role or being a support to someone who needs you.
You see this approach in other British actors like Michael Caine and Emma Thompson. James Garner and Kevin Bacon are the American actors who most display this penchant for taking on the next job even if it isn't Hamlet and even if the part isn't the starring role.
I admire this. None of us can take star turns everyday. But we can tackle the next thing life puts before us and try to make the best of it. I think that the Brits of Mills' generation would have called it pluck and it's a good thing.
Mills displayed this characteristic not only in his acting career, but more importantly in his personal life. He cared for his wife of more than sixty years after the onset of Alzheimer's Disease and his own worsening blindness.
For me, the one true and boundless source of pluck--the capacity to keep on keepin' on--is God, Who through Jesus Christ promises, "I will never leave you or forsake you." When God has your back, you can take on the next thing, whether it's the starring role or being a support to someone who needs you.
Troubling TIME Story of Ann Coulter
I read the TIME magazine cover story on pundit Ann Coulter yesterday. To tell the truth, my only exposure to her previous to that was seeing a few guest appearances she made on Hardball, in which Chris Matthews rightly raked her over the coals for suggesting that liberals are, by definition, unpatriotic.
What I got from the TIME article is that this is a woman who has found a profitable gig. She's a professional provocateur who would rather make people laugh than think. That's fine except that lots of people, whether supporters or detractors, take her schtick more seriously than she apparently does.
She also appears to me to be trapped by the persona she has created and fearful that as she continues to play her part, someone could physically attack her. That must be an awful feeling. Like the moth attracted to and willfully staying in the flame in spite of the risk, Coulter appears to be both lured and repulsed by the fame she has created for herself.
It's sad that we live in a culture that often loves heat more than light and that someone like Coulter is so desperate for prominence that, in spite of her undeniable intellectual gifts and quick wit, she feels compelled to throw in with the purveyors of heat rather than the throwers of light.
Her current prominence probably says something about her and about our country.
In spite of that seemingly negative assessment, I came away from reading the piece liking Coulter...and feeling sorry for her, genuinely sorry for her.
What I got from the TIME article is that this is a woman who has found a profitable gig. She's a professional provocateur who would rather make people laugh than think. That's fine except that lots of people, whether supporters or detractors, take her schtick more seriously than she apparently does.
She also appears to me to be trapped by the persona she has created and fearful that as she continues to play her part, someone could physically attack her. That must be an awful feeling. Like the moth attracted to and willfully staying in the flame in spite of the risk, Coulter appears to be both lured and repulsed by the fame she has created for herself.
It's sad that we live in a culture that often loves heat more than light and that someone like Coulter is so desperate for prominence that, in spite of her undeniable intellectual gifts and quick wit, she feels compelled to throw in with the purveyors of heat rather than the throwers of light.
Her current prominence probably says something about her and about our country.
In spite of that seemingly negative assessment, I came away from reading the piece liking Coulter...and feeling sorry for her, genuinely sorry for her.
Check Out Marty's Revamped Site!
My talented brother, Marty Daniels, has revamped his web site--including his blog. Check it out. Marty is a very funny comedian, performing in and producing clean shows for corporations and family venues all across the country. Yeah, it's a plug...But he is very good!
Go To Africa with Bolsinger and Son
Tod Bolsinger has a whole bunch of really good posts about a trip that he and his son just took to Africa. Check them out here.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Do Pols' Approaches to Marriage Vows Tell Us How They'll Approach a Constitutional Oath of Office?
That's the question that Ann Athouse raises here. An interesting discussion in the comments section of her post follows.
Interesting Conversation Incited by Asghar at 'Dimestore Guru'
Spinning off of an editorial that appeared in the Los Angeles Times (a rather poorly-reasoned one, for my money), Rob Asghar has incited a pretty interesting discussion the Church, society, and homosexual unions. You might want to read it and throw in your two-cents.
Could Blair Be a Role Model for US Pols?
New York Times foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman says that while he can't endorse candidates for President in the US, there's nothing preventing him from touting British Prime Minister Tony Blair for re-election on May 5.
A primary reason is that he sees Blair, who has always been accused of having no core political values, as principled. Writes Friedman:
Next, Friedman points out, Blair has managed to lead Britain to not only accept, but to readily participate in "the free market and globalization," two fundamental pillars of the world economy for the forseeable future. He's done this while increasing governmental services--there is, of course, no history of federalism in Britain and the government there functions in some ways, as both federal and state governments do here--and few tax increases.
In the meantime, Friedman notes, Blair has managed to "eviscerate" the Conservative Party, forcing it to carp on marginal issues.
All in all, Friedman believes that Blair gives the Democrats here at home something to think about. I think he's right. Blair's future-friendly center-left approach probably could fly in the US. Instead, Democrats sound too much like a party of the past and like Britain's Tories, have often allowed themselves to be marginalized by Republicans. I'm not certain many of them realize this even yet.
A primary reason is that he sees Blair, who has always been accused of having no core political values, as principled. Writes Friedman:
In deciding to throw in Britain's lot with President Bush on the Iraq war, Mr. Blair not only defied the overwhelming antiwar sentiment of his own party, but public opinion in Britain generally. "Blair risked complete self-immolation on a principle," noted Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a pro-Democratic U.S. think tank.Agree with the Bush-Blair policy on Iraq, one must grant Friedman's point. In a country where it was unpopular to support the war, Blair has been Mr. Steadfast. Blair's reward has been that irrespective of their feelings about Iraq, Britons still seem to back Blair and his Labour Party. One reason for this may be that the Conservative Party seems incapable of offering viable policy alternatives to the British electorate. The recent propensity of democratic nations, with aging baby boomer populations, for sticking with incumbents may also be at play. All of this may be true. But Blair took what he saw as a principled stand on foreign policy and is apparently on the brink of reaping electoral rewards for it.
Remember, in the darkest hours of the Iraq drama, when things were looking disastrous (and there have been many such hours), Mr. Bush could always count on the embrace of his own party and the U.S. conservative media machine and think tanks.
Tony Blair, by contrast, dined alone.
Next, Friedman points out, Blair has managed to lead Britain to not only accept, but to readily participate in "the free market and globalization," two fundamental pillars of the world economy for the forseeable future. He's done this while increasing governmental services--there is, of course, no history of federalism in Britain and the government there functions in some ways, as both federal and state governments do here--and few tax increases.
In the meantime, Friedman notes, Blair has managed to "eviscerate" the Conservative Party, forcing it to carp on marginal issues.
All in all, Friedman believes that Blair gives the Democrats here at home something to think about. I think he's right. Blair's future-friendly center-left approach probably could fly in the US. Instead, Democrats sound too much like a party of the past and like Britain's Tories, have often allowed themselves to be marginalized by Republicans. I'm not certain many of them realize this even yet.
Daugherty's Got Me Thinking
Paul Daugherty, who writes about sports (and life) for the Cincinnati Enquirer, is not just a favorite sports columnist...one of my favorite columnists, period. In his brilliant piece from yesterday, Daugherty discusses one consequence of Monday Night Football moving from ABC to ESPN: He's considering getting a dish.
You see, this fine sports journalist doesn't have cable, just the handful of stations he can pick up with his antenna. Whenever he reveals this to people, Daugherty says, people look at him like he has one eye in the middle of his forehead. (No ESPN!)
In this column, he also reveals that he isn't too high-tech: His computer connection to the Internet is dial-up.
I suppose that I'm just a few steps ahead of Daugherty. Like him, I live in a dial-up household. I don't own a palm pilot or a blackberry, whatever that is, either. When people start talking to me about i-Pods, Tivo, or just downloading music, my head starts spinning.
We have basic cable at our house, mostly because if left to watch the programming our antenna could feed us at our suburban Cincinnati home, we'd miss 99% of the shows we watch. Network fare for us includes 60 Minutes and the now-deceased Everybody Loves Raymond. That's about it.
Otherwise, we pretty well watch the various cable networks.
Our daughter likes to watch Lifetime, or as our son calls it, The I Hate Men Network with occasional stops at various and sundry reality shows. (I refer to them as un-reality shows.)
The son, as a History and Philosophy major, naturally gravitates to The Cartoon Network and The Food Channel. He also loves The National Geographic Channel. Like me, he'll usually watch a baseball game.
When it isn't showing endless "documentaries" on World War Two or the Civil War, The History Channel sometimes interests us.
My wife loves TNT, where she watches re-runs of Law and Order. Last night, we watched a half-hour of the movie, Pleasantville, together. (I still don't get what that movie is supposed to be about. I mean, what is its message, anyway? If you think you know, send a comment.)
I love MSNBC and sometimes look at the first two incarnations of ESPN.
We all love Turner Classic Movies and enjoyed AMC until somebody got the bright idea of ruining it.
The point is that while we do occasionally find TV shows worth watching on the cable, more than we probably would find if we didn't have it, Daugherty's got me thinking that maybe I've moved too far forward in the world of technology. Maybe I should not only trash cable, but TV altogether.
I know. I know. That's a radical statement. But I've noticed that when the TV is off, three things happen more easily: family conversation, reading, and thinking.
Those are three good things, I think.
You see, this fine sports journalist doesn't have cable, just the handful of stations he can pick up with his antenna. Whenever he reveals this to people, Daugherty says, people look at him like he has one eye in the middle of his forehead. (No ESPN!)
In this column, he also reveals that he isn't too high-tech: His computer connection to the Internet is dial-up.
I suppose that I'm just a few steps ahead of Daugherty. Like him, I live in a dial-up household. I don't own a palm pilot or a blackberry, whatever that is, either. When people start talking to me about i-Pods, Tivo, or just downloading music, my head starts spinning.
We have basic cable at our house, mostly because if left to watch the programming our antenna could feed us at our suburban Cincinnati home, we'd miss 99% of the shows we watch. Network fare for us includes 60 Minutes and the now-deceased Everybody Loves Raymond. That's about it.
Otherwise, we pretty well watch the various cable networks.
Our daughter likes to watch Lifetime, or as our son calls it, The I Hate Men Network with occasional stops at various and sundry reality shows. (I refer to them as un-reality shows.)
The son, as a History and Philosophy major, naturally gravitates to The Cartoon Network and The Food Channel. He also loves The National Geographic Channel. Like me, he'll usually watch a baseball game.
When it isn't showing endless "documentaries" on World War Two or the Civil War, The History Channel sometimes interests us.
My wife loves TNT, where she watches re-runs of Law and Order. Last night, we watched a half-hour of the movie, Pleasantville, together. (I still don't get what that movie is supposed to be about. I mean, what is its message, anyway? If you think you know, send a comment.)
I love MSNBC and sometimes look at the first two incarnations of ESPN.
We all love Turner Classic Movies and enjoyed AMC until somebody got the bright idea of ruining it.
The point is that while we do occasionally find TV shows worth watching on the cable, more than we probably would find if we didn't have it, Daugherty's got me thinking that maybe I've moved too far forward in the world of technology. Maybe I should not only trash cable, but TV altogether.
I know. I know. That's a radical statement. But I've noticed that when the TV is off, three things happen more easily: family conversation, reading, and thinking.
Those are three good things, I think.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Is There Ultimate Truth?
A reader left a comment here, asking me to prove my assertion that there is such a thing as ultimate truth.
Since we're talking about truth, let me be honest at the outset: I will be unable to prove ultimate truth satisfactorily under the rules of formal logic.
In the end, this assertion is rooted in faith, which is another word for trust.
But I think it's a logical faith. In Romans 12:2, for example, Paul talks about worshiping God with our whole lives, something I talk about here. One of our English translation, rightly, says that such self-surrender is our "spiritual worship." Literally, the original Greek says, logike latreia, meaning logical service. There is a sense in which, after a consideration of the facts, our experiences, and the well-documented human penchant for worshiping something, that it makes sense that we yield to the greater truth of God.
Let me give you what I consider to be two logical indicators for the existence of ultimate truth.
First: There is the amazing consensus that exists throughout history across varying cultures and belief systems about what is right and wrong. C.S. Lewis writes this:
The Bible says that God's truth is written into our hearts and we sense its call on our lives, although we have the freedom to rebel and with our psyches clouded by the distortion of self that we call sin--a condition before it results in actions, we try to bury it.
Paul, in the New Testament book of Romans, speaks of "the wrath of God," which is not an act of punishment by God, but the consequence of routinely ignoring the ultimate truth we observe in daily life. (Wrath then is, as I tell my Catechism students, like what happens if we stick our fingers in an electrical socket. The socket has nothing against us. But the electrical system is set up so that if we "cross the line" of God's laws for good living, there are consequences. They may not be immediately evident. But there are consequences. More on that presently.)
Paul writes:
Even moral systems not founded on monotheism acknowledge the need to bow to Someone or something greater than self.
Even moral systems that differ on the implications of neighbor love agree that it is an ultimate value, the violation of which is a great wrong.
This leads to the second logical indicator for the existence of ultimate truth. It's quite simple: God has revealed it and has done so ultimately, in the Person of Jesus Christ.
Human beings have a desire to bury the truth that there is ultimate right and wrong and that it has an Author worthy of our surrender. After all, if we can do that, then we have license to be our own gods, accountable only to ourselves.
What child hasn't fantasized about or actually tried, gorging on all the cookies in the jar when Dad or Mom wasn't looking? (After all, they reason, I want those cookies!) What married man or woman hasn't fantasized or actually tried, taking sexual intimacies from outside their marital relationship? (After all, they reason, I want those cookies!) This inclination is really a desire to bury God and, in the words of Genesis, "be like God."
If one is successful in burying God and the ultimate truth around which He says life is good, we erase wrath (the consequences of acting like gods to ourselves), or so we think. (It undoubtedly is why the world killed and buried Jesus. Fortunately for us, Jesus wouldn't stay dead. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.)
God, being gracious and as the Bible puts it, "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love," is unwilling to see us victimized by our worship of self. God refuses to give us up to wrath without fighting for us. That's why Jesus, the ultimate revelation of God, came into the world. The wages of sin may be death, as Romans 6:23 says, "but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Jesus reveals ultimate truth. He shows us what ultimate truth is by the life that He lived while walking this earth. It's a life of absolute love for God and neighbor. In this life, Jesus accomplished something which no human being, in spite of the sense of right and wrong that courses through the veins of all of us, had previously been able to do and something that nobody since has pulled off either. His is a life so perfect that He was able to act as the sacrifice, the payment, for our sins and so destroy the power of wrath over the lives of those who turn from sin and entrust their existences--past, present, and future--to Him.
"I am the way, the truth, and the life," Jesus tells us. (John 14:6)
Although I believe that these two things--the inbuilt sense of right and wrong and the Person of Jesus--are logical indicators of the existence of ultimate truth, I realize that they don't prove my assertion.
But this is what I know: If you will allow yourself to surrender to Jesus Christ, you will also believe in ultimate truth. I dare you to try that.
It's what I did back in my atheist days. I found my mind, heart, and will stirred by something as I spent time with these Christians, everyday people who never claimed to be better than others, but who found hope, strength, and encouragement in Christ. I was further stirred as I started to read the Bible in a translation that was accessible to me.
Against my will, against my previous derision of faith, of Christians, and of the weakness of those who surrender, I found myself loving Jesus Christ.
I finally said something like, "God, I don't know if You're there and I don't know exactly what's happening to me. But if Jesus is Who You are, I want You in my life. I don't want to the be the ultimate authority of my life because I know that I'll only screw up."
I haven't always obeyed God's ultimate truth. I do things that deserve wrath. (In fact, one of my frequent daily prayers is, "Thank You, God, for not killing me as I deserve.") But I have found God to be just like He reveals Himself to be through Jesus: a Truth of rightness, love, charity, and forgiveness on Whom I can build my life!
I hope that this helps.
Since we're talking about truth, let me be honest at the outset: I will be unable to prove ultimate truth satisfactorily under the rules of formal logic.
In the end, this assertion is rooted in faith, which is another word for trust.
But I think it's a logical faith. In Romans 12:2, for example, Paul talks about worshiping God with our whole lives, something I talk about here. One of our English translation, rightly, says that such self-surrender is our "spiritual worship." Literally, the original Greek says, logike latreia, meaning logical service. There is a sense in which, after a consideration of the facts, our experiences, and the well-documented human penchant for worshiping something, that it makes sense that we yield to the greater truth of God.
Let me give you what I consider to be two logical indicators for the existence of ultimate truth.
First: There is the amazing consensus that exists throughout history across varying cultures and belief systems about what is right and wrong. C.S. Lewis writes this:
If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teachings of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans, what will really strike him [sic] will be how very like they are to each other and to our own...I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men [sic] have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to--whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired...It seems that all human beings sense the existence of an ultimate truth toward which it is best to conform one's life, although we all fail.
The Bible says that God's truth is written into our hearts and we sense its call on our lives, although we have the freedom to rebel and with our psyches clouded by the distortion of self that we call sin--a condition before it results in actions, we try to bury it.
Paul, in the New Testament book of Romans, speaks of "the wrath of God," which is not an act of punishment by God, but the consequence of routinely ignoring the ultimate truth we observe in daily life. (Wrath then is, as I tell my Catechism students, like what happens if we stick our fingers in an electrical socket. The socket has nothing against us. But the electrical system is set up so that if we "cross the line" of God's laws for good living, there are consequences. They may not be immediately evident. But there are consequences. More on that presently.)
Paul writes:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God [the Author of truth] is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world His eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things He has made...(Romans 1:18-20)The moral system, founded on twin pillars, which appears inbuilt in the human psyche is one which seems to pervade all human attempts to live good lives or establish virtue. Those twin pillars, summarized not only in the Great Commandment articulated by Jesus, but also in the two tables of the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament and in the two sacraments instituted by Jesus, are these: love God and love neighbor.
Even moral systems not founded on monotheism acknowledge the need to bow to Someone or something greater than self.
Even moral systems that differ on the implications of neighbor love agree that it is an ultimate value, the violation of which is a great wrong.
This leads to the second logical indicator for the existence of ultimate truth. It's quite simple: God has revealed it and has done so ultimately, in the Person of Jesus Christ.
Human beings have a desire to bury the truth that there is ultimate right and wrong and that it has an Author worthy of our surrender. After all, if we can do that, then we have license to be our own gods, accountable only to ourselves.
What child hasn't fantasized about or actually tried, gorging on all the cookies in the jar when Dad or Mom wasn't looking? (After all, they reason, I want those cookies!) What married man or woman hasn't fantasized or actually tried, taking sexual intimacies from outside their marital relationship? (After all, they reason, I want those cookies!) This inclination is really a desire to bury God and, in the words of Genesis, "be like God."
If one is successful in burying God and the ultimate truth around which He says life is good, we erase wrath (the consequences of acting like gods to ourselves), or so we think. (It undoubtedly is why the world killed and buried Jesus. Fortunately for us, Jesus wouldn't stay dead. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.)
God, being gracious and as the Bible puts it, "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love," is unwilling to see us victimized by our worship of self. God refuses to give us up to wrath without fighting for us. That's why Jesus, the ultimate revelation of God, came into the world. The wages of sin may be death, as Romans 6:23 says, "but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Jesus reveals ultimate truth. He shows us what ultimate truth is by the life that He lived while walking this earth. It's a life of absolute love for God and neighbor. In this life, Jesus accomplished something which no human being, in spite of the sense of right and wrong that courses through the veins of all of us, had previously been able to do and something that nobody since has pulled off either. His is a life so perfect that He was able to act as the sacrifice, the payment, for our sins and so destroy the power of wrath over the lives of those who turn from sin and entrust their existences--past, present, and future--to Him.
"I am the way, the truth, and the life," Jesus tells us. (John 14:6)
Although I believe that these two things--the inbuilt sense of right and wrong and the Person of Jesus--are logical indicators of the existence of ultimate truth, I realize that they don't prove my assertion.
But this is what I know: If you will allow yourself to surrender to Jesus Christ, you will also believe in ultimate truth. I dare you to try that.
It's what I did back in my atheist days. I found my mind, heart, and will stirred by something as I spent time with these Christians, everyday people who never claimed to be better than others, but who found hope, strength, and encouragement in Christ. I was further stirred as I started to read the Bible in a translation that was accessible to me.
Against my will, against my previous derision of faith, of Christians, and of the weakness of those who surrender, I found myself loving Jesus Christ.
I finally said something like, "God, I don't know if You're there and I don't know exactly what's happening to me. But if Jesus is Who You are, I want You in my life. I don't want to the be the ultimate authority of my life because I know that I'll only screw up."
I haven't always obeyed God's ultimate truth. I do things that deserve wrath. (In fact, one of my frequent daily prayers is, "Thank You, God, for not killing me as I deserve.") But I have found God to be just like He reveals Himself to be through Jesus: a Truth of rightness, love, charity, and forgiveness on Whom I can build my life!
I hope that this helps.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Pope Benedict XVI
Because the College of Cardinals had already been, in effect, sequestered for prayer and conversation for a longer period of time than is ordinarily the case before the start of a conclave, I had thought that consensus would develop quickly around a new pope. I predicted to my family yesterday that we would know today or tomorrow.
But I was surprised by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's selection. I had expected a pope from the Third World.
Many of my Roman Catholic friends and acquaintances will be disappointed by the prospect of Benedict XVI's papacy. They will see him as intransigent on issues they believe require change. Like them, I would like to see the Roman Church ordain women and allow priests to marry as a matter of course.
But on the core issues of Christian faith, it seems that Benedict will be a firm, if gentle, rock. In these times when the entire Church catholic, all of us who confess Jesus Christ as Lord, confront what the new pope has called "the dictatorship of relativism," it will be good to have a Bishop of Rome who is firmly committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and who possesses the quality of mind and the sensitivity of spirit to effectively proclaim Christ and God's truth in uncertain times.
My prayers are with the new pope.
But I was surprised by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's selection. I had expected a pope from the Third World.
Many of my Roman Catholic friends and acquaintances will be disappointed by the prospect of Benedict XVI's papacy. They will see him as intransigent on issues they believe require change. Like them, I would like to see the Roman Church ordain women and allow priests to marry as a matter of course.
But on the core issues of Christian faith, it seems that Benedict will be a firm, if gentle, rock. In these times when the entire Church catholic, all of us who confess Jesus Christ as Lord, confront what the new pope has called "the dictatorship of relativism," it will be good to have a Bishop of Rome who is firmly committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and who possesses the quality of mind and the sensitivity of spirit to effectively proclaim Christ and God's truth in uncertain times.
My prayers are with the new pope.
Influential Theologian Discusses Future of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
I just received this email from WordAlone, a group working for reform of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). WordAlone's mission is to call the ELCA to once more embracing the foundational belief that the Bible, as the Word of God, is the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice. The article quotes the informed musings of one of our most eminent leaders, pastor and church historian James Nestingen.
Nestingen addresses crisis in ELCA
by Betsy Carlson, editor
After hearing an inspiring talk by Prof. James Nestingen,
WordAlone Network members heard about its board of
directors’ proposals to look into forming an association of
“confessing” congregations and a house of studies to
prepare individuals for ministry, as an alternative to
present seminaries.
Nestingen told his hearers that now is the time for the
WordAlone to prepare to possibly be forced out of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America because of its stand
to live by the truth of Scripture and the Lutheran
Confessions.
He said a couple of things have occurred that have made
WordAlone’s standing in the ELCA more precarious. For one
thing, the ELCA has not responded to the WordAlone
Theological Board’s Admonition for the Sake of the True
Peace and Unity of the Church; and ELCA bishops have made
it almost impossible for candidates to obtain exceptions to
the requirement of ordination by bishops in Called to
Common Mission, the full communion agreement with The
Episcopal Church USA.
The other event is the recent actions of the ELCA Church
Council, by a nearly unanimous vote, to propose the
creation of a process for granting exceptions to ELCA
ordination qualifications requiring celibacy of gay and
lesbians seeking ordination or consecration or
commissioning to ministry. This exception, if okayed by the
ELCA Churchwide Assembly next August in Florida, would
allow gays and lesbians in same-sex relationships to be
ordained and rostered as ministers at the discretion of the
Conference of Bishops.
"I never thought I’d ask this,” Nestingen stated, “but what
do we do now?”
He said now is the time to look into creating alliances
with other ELCA members who “have been pushed to the
margins. “This church is leaving us, stripping us of
standing in the body which we have cherished,” he
commented.
Now is the time to take provisional steps for the sake of
WordAlone’s witness and for the sake of its congregations,
he said. “Jesus has always loved sinners and is always at
his best when there is no human hope. He may turn this
around and bring us from this long crucifixion we have
endured in this church to resurrection.”
As he finished, the 450 to 500 persons gathered rose to
give him a long, standing ovation.
Board members Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt, a professor of religion
at South Dakota State University in Brookings, S.D., and
Pastor Randy Freund of Faith Lutheran Church in Hutchinson,
Minn., then presented resolutions to look into creating a
house of studies and an association of confessing churches.
Along with WordAlone president Jaynan Clark Egland, they
answered questions from WordAlone members, such as: “Will
members of the new association be required to join
WordAlone?” The answer was, “No.” The board members
suggested that much of what the house of studies and new
association will look like is still to be determined. They
acknowledged they don’t know if the association ultimately
will leave the ELCA or not.
Further discussion of the proposals and votes on the
resolutions are expected Tuesday.
WordAlone is meeting in convention at St. Andrew’s Lutheran
Church in Mahtomedi, Minn. Keynote speakers are discussing
the authority of Scripture in teaching sessions.
Nestingen addresses crisis in ELCA
by Betsy Carlson, editor
After hearing an inspiring talk by Prof. James Nestingen,
WordAlone Network members heard about its board of
directors’ proposals to look into forming an association of
“confessing” congregations and a house of studies to
prepare individuals for ministry, as an alternative to
present seminaries.
Nestingen told his hearers that now is the time for the
WordAlone to prepare to possibly be forced out of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America because of its stand
to live by the truth of Scripture and the Lutheran
Confessions.
He said a couple of things have occurred that have made
WordAlone’s standing in the ELCA more precarious. For one
thing, the ELCA has not responded to the WordAlone
Theological Board’s Admonition for the Sake of the True
Peace and Unity of the Church; and ELCA bishops have made
it almost impossible for candidates to obtain exceptions to
the requirement of ordination by bishops in Called to
Common Mission, the full communion agreement with The
Episcopal Church USA.
The other event is the recent actions of the ELCA Church
Council, by a nearly unanimous vote, to propose the
creation of a process for granting exceptions to ELCA
ordination qualifications requiring celibacy of gay and
lesbians seeking ordination or consecration or
commissioning to ministry. This exception, if okayed by the
ELCA Churchwide Assembly next August in Florida, would
allow gays and lesbians in same-sex relationships to be
ordained and rostered as ministers at the discretion of the
Conference of Bishops.
"I never thought I’d ask this,” Nestingen stated, “but what
do we do now?”
He said now is the time to look into creating alliances
with other ELCA members who “have been pushed to the
margins. “This church is leaving us, stripping us of
standing in the body which we have cherished,” he
commented.
Now is the time to take provisional steps for the sake of
WordAlone’s witness and for the sake of its congregations,
he said. “Jesus has always loved sinners and is always at
his best when there is no human hope. He may turn this
around and bring us from this long crucifixion we have
endured in this church to resurrection.”
As he finished, the 450 to 500 persons gathered rose to
give him a long, standing ovation.
Board members Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt, a professor of religion
at South Dakota State University in Brookings, S.D., and
Pastor Randy Freund of Faith Lutheran Church in Hutchinson,
Minn., then presented resolutions to look into creating a
house of studies and an association of confessing churches.
Along with WordAlone president Jaynan Clark Egland, they
answered questions from WordAlone members, such as: “Will
members of the new association be required to join
WordAlone?” The answer was, “No.” The board members
suggested that much of what the house of studies and new
association will look like is still to be determined. They
acknowledged they don’t know if the association ultimately
will leave the ELCA or not.
Further discussion of the proposals and votes on the
resolutions are expected Tuesday.
WordAlone is meeting in convention at St. Andrew’s Lutheran
Church in Mahtomedi, Minn. Keynote speakers are discussing
the authority of Scripture in teaching sessions.
How Not To Win Friends and Influence People
Taking a break from preparations for tonight's Forty Days of Purpose small group, I checked out the always interesting blog site of Ann Althouse and was of course, rewarded. Althouse has a short post on the explanation of a person who recently confronted Supreme Court Justice in a rude way. A really fine post!
I felt moved to respond:
I felt moved to respond:
Ann:
...We do have freedom of speech in this country. So, to an extent I suppose, we have the right to be rude to others, irrespective of their stations.
But I wonder how politic it is.
Incidentally, while I personally regard the practice of homosexuality as a sin, I favor moves toward securing full civil rights for gays and lesbians, including an openness to the establishment of some sort of civil recognition of marriage-like relationships. (This I deem no threat to marriage or the Church. I regard "marriage" under state laws to be a different, though often coterminous, institution from the relationship we recognize within the Church.)
I say all this by way of explaining that my rejection of rudeness has nothing to do with a bias.
Interesting post!
Monday, April 18, 2005
Reflections on Cardinal Ratzinger's Identification of 'Dictatorship of Relativism'
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, preaching today at the mass for his fellow cardinals as they prepared to enter the conclave at which they will elect the next Roman Catholic pope, said some things that may raise eyebrows. In particular, he spoke of the "dictatorship of relativism."
His words met with thunderous approval from his fellow clerics, but were likely greeted with chagrin by those, especially in America and Europe, hoping that the Church will turn from many of its traditional teachings.
As a Lutheran Christian, I admit that I am not in agreement with some official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
But as I hope readers of this blog can attest, I also gladly and unreservedly affirm that Roman Catholic Christians are my sisters and brothers in Christ. A Roman Catholic priest preached at my service of ordination and participated in the laying on of hands there. (I suppose that, for those who believe in such things, this puts me in apostolic succession. Lutheran and Nazarene pastors also placed their hands on me then.) I enjoy warm personal friendships with deeply committed Roman Catholics and have since adolescence. I have had the honor of preaching in several Roman Catholic parishes.
I mention all this by way of saying that I care about the Roman Church without agreeing with it on every particular of doctrine. There are many Catholic notions which Ratzinger, the Church's chief enforcer of doctrine, holds to be core elements of Christian belief that I see as mere cultural accretions or traditions with scant Biblical support. (Luther would call these adiaphora, non-salvific beliefs without eternal consequence. I would agree with him.)
But I also think that Ratzinger was dead-on at some points in his homily. A CBC account tells us:
This evening on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, Hugh asked listeners if we thought that Ratzinger were onto something. Is there a "dictatorship of relativism" which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires?
Is it possible in today's culture for anyone to assert that, "This is timelessly true and anything that is opposed to this truth is false" without being dismissed as intolerant by the PC-police?
Sadly, my observation and recent experiences lead me to believe that there is a dictatorship such as that described by Ratzinger. More than a few of my pastoral colleagues and I have seen this close-up in our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
For about a decade now, there has been a movement within our church body that has two goals: to allow for the ordination of practicing homosexuals and to allow for the church sanctioning of homosexual unions.
Those advocating both or one of these two positions have grabbed the reins of influence within our Church and have framed the entire discussion of these two issues as being about tolerance. From their perspective, those who agree with their positions are tolerant and those who disagree are intolerant.
(Of course, this framing of theological discussion ignores the fact that the Bible doesn't see tolerance as an ultimate value. Indeed, Christians are called to be tolerant of all people and completely intolerant of sin, especially in ourselves. The worst thing that Christians can do is take a tolerant attitude toward overt rebellion against God. In John 20:23, Jesus gives His followers the responsibility of proclaiming forgiveness to those who turn from sin and turn toward Christ and of announcing to those unwilling to make such a turn--what the Bible calls repentance--that their sins are unforgiven and that they are therefore separated from God.)
Questions about what is right and wrong have been swept aside by these advocates of the law of relativism that tolerates anything, even if it's wrong. Several years ago, a colleague served on a national board of our denomination which was considering a paper embodying the movement goal of sanctioning homosexual unions. A lay member of the board spoke up and asked, "Doesn't the Bible indicate that marriage is between men and women?" Hearing this, another member became agitated. "Why?" this second person wondered, "Do people always bring up the Bible in these discussions?"
This sentiment is apparently shared by more than those uninformed of the traditional Lutheran view that the Bible is the ultimate arbiter of Christians' beliefs and practices. Readers of this blog will know that in January, a "study" of sexuality sponsored by the ELCA and conducted by a church-appointed commission was released. In the run-up to that, documentation was given to our congregations designed to frame their consideration of the commission's work. In the documentation, the commission suggested that there were three authoritative voices to which the Church should heed in the discussion: (1) The Bible; (2) Science; (3) Societal views.
Lutherans have always been at home with the life of the mind. The movement was, after all, born in a university. The tradition includes people like Schweitzer, Kierkegaard, and Bach. So, unlike some Christian traditions perhaps, Lutheranism has never reacted with reflexive negativity to intellectual inquisitiveness, creative adventurism, or scientific inquiry.
Lutherans have always tried to be sensitive to what's going on in the world, sometimes being overly accommodating to prevailing world views. (That was our sin in Nazi Germany. That was also the wrong committed by many leading Lutheran theologians in the US who defended slavery before our Civil War. But Lutherans have also been quick to acknowledge the Biblical call to be transformed people who strive to do things God's way rather than following the selfish customs of the human race.) (Romans 12:1-2; Philippians 2:4-11)
The commission's elevation of three seemingly co-equal authorities for the Church's discussion represented a stunning departure from Lutheran insistence that the Bible contains God's truth. The reason we refer to the Bible as canon, a word for a form of measurement, is that we deem the Scriptures to be the expression of God's truth against which we measure all other truth claims.
There is room in this view for varying perspectives of the meaning of specific Biblical teachings, of course. But there certainly can be no wiggle room for those wishing to designate as right what the Bible clearly calls wrong.
Yet, the PC police in our body have been able to manipulate this discussion so as to make opponents of Biblical revisionism afraid to speak up. They accuse those who disagree with them, either overtly or by implication, of being intolerant.
Being intolerant, in this view, is to hold that there are absolutes.
But this puts the dictaors of relativism at odds with the Scriptures. Jesus, for example, calls Himself "the way, the truth, and the life" and says that no one can know God apart from Him. (John 14:6)
The Bible warns us from putting too much stock in our own judgments of right and wrong, relying on God's judgment as being our ultimate guide: "There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way of death." (Proverbs 14:12)
The Bible also claims to authoritatively speak for God: "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness..." (Second Timothy 3:16)
The dictatorship of relativism wants to deny the existence of absolute truth founded in an absolutely good God Who speaks to us authoritatively through the Bible because such denial allows human beings to evade responsibility for our sin, giving us license to do what we want to do.
When Adam was confronted for his sin, he blamed his wife. She in turn, blamed the serpent who beguiled her. When God confronted their son, Cain, for murdering his brother, Abel, Cain tried to shrug the whole thing off by asking God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" We've been trying to shrug off the existence of right and wrong ever since. But we can't do it.
As Paul notes in his opening salvo in the extraordinary New Testament book of Romans:
This is why the Bible is so unrelenting in its call for us to be truthful with ourselves and with God. It's only by an honest accounting of our wrongs that we become open to receiving the forgiveness and new life God offers through Jesus Christ:
A friend of ours went through a divorce. Her husband had an affair, which she had been willing to forgive provided they got counseling and he exhibited a genuine effort to rebuild their marriage. But the man left.
As he walked out the door of the house, leaving our friend and their child, the woman said, "How can you be so selfish? Don't you know how wrong this is?"
In patronizing tones, the husband replied, "There's no such thing as right and wrong."
Some months later, the two were locked in a custody dispute. The husband who'd left the relationship almost exactly, though unconsciously, aped his estranged wife's words when he asked her, "Don't you know how wrong this is?"
Our friend, actually trying to do right by both their child and her one-time husband, replied, "I thought you said that there was no such thing as right and wrong."
The fact is, that no matter how hard we try to bury it, there is such a thing as ultimate truth. The dictators of relativism cannot change that.
These days, I'm praying that neither the Roman Catholic Church or my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America cave in to the fads of the times, but always strive to make their decisions in prayerful consideration of the witness of Scripture, God's authoritative truth source. We, in our respective church bodies, won't always get it right. We will sin. But if we keep the God we meet on the Bible's sacred pages as our True North, we'll never veer far off course or for very long.
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has produced a transcript of Ratzinger's entire homily on his blog. In it, I note, Ratzinger speaks of "cheap grace." So far as I know, this term was coined by the martyred German Lutheran theologian and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It appears in Bonhoeffer's classic book, The Cost of Discipleship. In it, Bonhoeffer contrasts "cheap grace" with "costly grace."
Grace, is literally God's charitable decision to forgive sin and offer new life through Jesus Christ as a gift to all with faith in Him. (John 3:16) It is utterly free and cannot be earned, only appropriated by those who dare to entrust their lives and eternal destinies to Christ.
Bonhoeffer says that while God's grace is free, it isn't cheap. This is so, first of all, because it cost Christ His suffering and death on the cross. It's also not cheap because new life through Christ and Christ Himself are such valuable and precious commodities. "Lord, you are more precious than silver...more costly than gold," the Bible says.
Finally, God's grace is costly because in order for us to receive it, it will cost us our lives. You can't hold onto the dying trophies of this life and still grasp Christ's outstretched hand. Jesus had this abandonment of self-seeking ways in mind when He said:
Cheap grace is the sort of grace we winkingly give to one another, allowing ourselves license for sin, deliberately rebelling against God and daring to call it holy.
Costly grace is the sort that comes to those who are absolutely honest about the pervasiveness of our sin and our need of God, who surrender and open themselves to the invasion of Christ into every department of their lives, who admit their unholiness, and hungrily feed on Christ's forgiveness and goodness.
ANOTHER UPDATE: John Schroeder has linked to this post on his site, Blogotional. Thanks, John! By the way, I haven't expressed any opinion on the filibuster issue to which John connects this post and have no plans for doing so.
THANKS to Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice for linking to this post in his extensive round-up of reactions to Cardinal Ratzinger's elevation to the papacy.
His words met with thunderous approval from his fellow clerics, but were likely greeted with chagrin by those, especially in America and Europe, hoping that the Church will turn from many of its traditional teachings.
As a Lutheran Christian, I admit that I am not in agreement with some official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
I believe in the ordination of women, for example.
I don't believe that the use of contraceptives by married couples is sinful.
I can see no reason for insisting that clergy be celibate.
I don't buy traditional Roman understandings of sainthood or of Mary.
While I resonate more closely with the Catholic Church's teachings on Holy Communion than with those of say, the Methodist Church in which I grew up, I still have my differences with Rome on this important subject.
My belief that the Bible, as God's Word, is the ultimate authority for the life, faith, and practice of the Church and of individual Christians, finds me casting a wary eye on the Roman Church's seeming overreliance on extra-biblical writings and traditions.
But as I hope readers of this blog can attest, I also gladly and unreservedly affirm that Roman Catholic Christians are my sisters and brothers in Christ. A Roman Catholic priest preached at my service of ordination and participated in the laying on of hands there. (I suppose that, for those who believe in such things, this puts me in apostolic succession. Lutheran and Nazarene pastors also placed their hands on me then.) I enjoy warm personal friendships with deeply committed Roman Catholics and have since adolescence. I have had the honor of preaching in several Roman Catholic parishes.
I mention all this by way of saying that I care about the Roman Church without agreeing with it on every particular of doctrine. There are many Catholic notions which Ratzinger, the Church's chief enforcer of doctrine, holds to be core elements of Christian belief that I see as mere cultural accretions or traditions with scant Biblical support. (Luther would call these adiaphora, non-salvific beliefs without eternal consequence. I would agree with him.)
But I also think that Ratzinger was dead-on at some points in his homily. A CBC account tells us:
"Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labelled today as a fundamentalism, whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards," the 78-year-old Ratzinger said during the homily.An account from The Australian quotes Ratzinger as contrasting immature faith, susceptible to the shifting winds of personal preference and of cultural fads, with mature faith, which follows Jesus Christ as its True North by Whom one is called to live, no matter what opposition or derision is faced:
"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."
"'Grown-up' is not a faith that follows every wave of fashion and the latest news," he told the pre-election mass celebrated just hours before cardinals were sequestered in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.[Syncretism, by way of explanation, is the combination of faith in Christ with other religions, traditions, and isms in a faithless effort to make oneself more palatable and unexceptionable to those who might reject a clear, faithful allegiance to Christ as Lord and God. This is alluring for a coward like me. But Jesus tells us that if we are unwilling to acknowledge Him and His Lordship here on earth, He cannot acknowledge as His own in eternity.]
"'Adult and mature' is a faith profoundly rooted in the friendship of Christ.
"How many winds of doctrine have we known in these past decades; how many ideological currents; how many ways of thinking?
"The little boat of thought for many Christians has quite often been thrown from one extreme to the other, from Marxism to liberalism, right through to libertinism, from collectivism to radical individualism, from atheism to a vague religious mysticism, from agnosticism to syncretism."
This evening on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, Hugh asked listeners if we thought that Ratzinger were onto something. Is there a "dictatorship of relativism" which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires?
Is it possible in today's culture for anyone to assert that, "This is timelessly true and anything that is opposed to this truth is false" without being dismissed as intolerant by the PC-police?
Sadly, my observation and recent experiences lead me to believe that there is a dictatorship such as that described by Ratzinger. More than a few of my pastoral colleagues and I have seen this close-up in our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
For about a decade now, there has been a movement within our church body that has two goals: to allow for the ordination of practicing homosexuals and to allow for the church sanctioning of homosexual unions.
Those advocating both or one of these two positions have grabbed the reins of influence within our Church and have framed the entire discussion of these two issues as being about tolerance. From their perspective, those who agree with their positions are tolerant and those who disagree are intolerant.
(Of course, this framing of theological discussion ignores the fact that the Bible doesn't see tolerance as an ultimate value. Indeed, Christians are called to be tolerant of all people and completely intolerant of sin, especially in ourselves. The worst thing that Christians can do is take a tolerant attitude toward overt rebellion against God. In John 20:23, Jesus gives His followers the responsibility of proclaiming forgiveness to those who turn from sin and turn toward Christ and of announcing to those unwilling to make such a turn--what the Bible calls repentance--that their sins are unforgiven and that they are therefore separated from God.)
Questions about what is right and wrong have been swept aside by these advocates of the law of relativism that tolerates anything, even if it's wrong. Several years ago, a colleague served on a national board of our denomination which was considering a paper embodying the movement goal of sanctioning homosexual unions. A lay member of the board spoke up and asked, "Doesn't the Bible indicate that marriage is between men and women?" Hearing this, another member became agitated. "Why?" this second person wondered, "Do people always bring up the Bible in these discussions?"
This sentiment is apparently shared by more than those uninformed of the traditional Lutheran view that the Bible is the ultimate arbiter of Christians' beliefs and practices. Readers of this blog will know that in January, a "study" of sexuality sponsored by the ELCA and conducted by a church-appointed commission was released. In the run-up to that, documentation was given to our congregations designed to frame their consideration of the commission's work. In the documentation, the commission suggested that there were three authoritative voices to which the Church should heed in the discussion: (1) The Bible; (2) Science; (3) Societal views.
Lutherans have always been at home with the life of the mind. The movement was, after all, born in a university. The tradition includes people like Schweitzer, Kierkegaard, and Bach. So, unlike some Christian traditions perhaps, Lutheranism has never reacted with reflexive negativity to intellectual inquisitiveness, creative adventurism, or scientific inquiry.
Lutherans have always tried to be sensitive to what's going on in the world, sometimes being overly accommodating to prevailing world views. (That was our sin in Nazi Germany. That was also the wrong committed by many leading Lutheran theologians in the US who defended slavery before our Civil War. But Lutherans have also been quick to acknowledge the Biblical call to be transformed people who strive to do things God's way rather than following the selfish customs of the human race.) (Romans 12:1-2; Philippians 2:4-11)
The commission's elevation of three seemingly co-equal authorities for the Church's discussion represented a stunning departure from Lutheran insistence that the Bible contains God's truth. The reason we refer to the Bible as canon, a word for a form of measurement, is that we deem the Scriptures to be the expression of God's truth against which we measure all other truth claims.
There is room in this view for varying perspectives of the meaning of specific Biblical teachings, of course. But there certainly can be no wiggle room for those wishing to designate as right what the Bible clearly calls wrong.
Yet, the PC police in our body have been able to manipulate this discussion so as to make opponents of Biblical revisionism afraid to speak up. They accuse those who disagree with them, either overtly or by implication, of being intolerant.
Being intolerant, in this view, is to hold that there are absolutes.
But this puts the dictaors of relativism at odds with the Scriptures. Jesus, for example, calls Himself "the way, the truth, and the life" and says that no one can know God apart from Him. (John 14:6)
The Bible warns us from putting too much stock in our own judgments of right and wrong, relying on God's judgment as being our ultimate guide: "There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way of death." (Proverbs 14:12)
The Bible also claims to authoritatively speak for God: "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness..." (Second Timothy 3:16)
The dictatorship of relativism wants to deny the existence of absolute truth founded in an absolutely good God Who speaks to us authoritatively through the Bible because such denial allows human beings to evade responsibility for our sin, giving us license to do what we want to do.
When Adam was confronted for his sin, he blamed his wife. She in turn, blamed the serpent who beguiled her. When God confronted their son, Cain, for murdering his brother, Abel, Cain tried to shrug the whole thing off by asking God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" We've been trying to shrug off the existence of right and wrong ever since. But we can't do it.
As Paul notes in his opening salvo in the extraordinary New Testament book of Romans:
"...the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them, Ever since the creation of the world His eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things He has made. So they are without excuse; for they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools..." (Romans 1:18-23)Paul is saying here that we all know that there is ultimate truth and it resides in God. This knowledge is knit into our very DNA. But to acknowledge these things forces us to subordinate ourselves to God and to turn to Him for merciful forgiveness for our violations of His will for us.
This is why the Bible is so unrelenting in its call for us to be truthful with ourselves and with God. It's only by an honest accounting of our wrongs that we become open to receiving the forgiveness and new life God offers through Jesus Christ:
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He Who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar..." (First John 1:8-10)The ultimate reason that Jesus, God in the flesh, was crucifed by the human race and the reason that we would prefer not following Christ today is that we are what the Bible calls, idolaters. We choose to worship things rather than God, lying to ourselves about Who is really in charge and really our Boss, because things can be manipulated and God can't be. We choose to worship ourselves because, like Eve in the garden, lured to rebel against God's commands, we want an easy life in which nobody finds us objectionable for suggesting that we individual human beings ought to be the ultimate authorities over our lives.
"The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." (Psalm 51:17)
A friend of ours went through a divorce. Her husband had an affair, which she had been willing to forgive provided they got counseling and he exhibited a genuine effort to rebuild their marriage. But the man left.
As he walked out the door of the house, leaving our friend and their child, the woman said, "How can you be so selfish? Don't you know how wrong this is?"
In patronizing tones, the husband replied, "There's no such thing as right and wrong."
Some months later, the two were locked in a custody dispute. The husband who'd left the relationship almost exactly, though unconsciously, aped his estranged wife's words when he asked her, "Don't you know how wrong this is?"
Our friend, actually trying to do right by both their child and her one-time husband, replied, "I thought you said that there was no such thing as right and wrong."
The fact is, that no matter how hard we try to bury it, there is such a thing as ultimate truth. The dictators of relativism cannot change that.
These days, I'm praying that neither the Roman Catholic Church or my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America cave in to the fads of the times, but always strive to make their decisions in prayerful consideration of the witness of Scripture, God's authoritative truth source. We, in our respective church bodies, won't always get it right. We will sin. But if we keep the God we meet on the Bible's sacred pages as our True North, we'll never veer far off course or for very long.
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has produced a transcript of Ratzinger's entire homily on his blog. In it, I note, Ratzinger speaks of "cheap grace." So far as I know, this term was coined by the martyred German Lutheran theologian and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It appears in Bonhoeffer's classic book, The Cost of Discipleship. In it, Bonhoeffer contrasts "cheap grace" with "costly grace."
Grace, is literally God's charitable decision to forgive sin and offer new life through Jesus Christ as a gift to all with faith in Him. (John 3:16) It is utterly free and cannot be earned, only appropriated by those who dare to entrust their lives and eternal destinies to Christ.
Bonhoeffer says that while God's grace is free, it isn't cheap. This is so, first of all, because it cost Christ His suffering and death on the cross. It's also not cheap because new life through Christ and Christ Himself are such valuable and precious commodities. "Lord, you are more precious than silver...more costly than gold," the Bible says.
Finally, God's grace is costly because in order for us to receive it, it will cost us our lives. You can't hold onto the dying trophies of this life and still grasp Christ's outstretched hand. Jesus had this abandonment of self-seeking ways in mind when He said:
"If any want to become My followers. let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake will save it." (Luke 9:23-24)I believe that Ratzinger is saying that the Church must not fall prey to the temptation of making itself temporarily acceptable to the dictatorship of relativism and thereby divest itself of its connection to Christ.
Cheap grace is the sort of grace we winkingly give to one another, allowing ourselves license for sin, deliberately rebelling against God and daring to call it holy.
Costly grace is the sort that comes to those who are absolutely honest about the pervasiveness of our sin and our need of God, who surrender and open themselves to the invasion of Christ into every department of their lives, who admit their unholiness, and hungrily feed on Christ's forgiveness and goodness.
ANOTHER UPDATE: John Schroeder has linked to this post on his site, Blogotional. Thanks, John! By the way, I haven't expressed any opinion on the filibuster issue to which John connects this post and have no plans for doing so.
THANKS to Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice for linking to this post in his extensive round-up of reactions to Cardinal Ratzinger's elevation to the papacy.
More on Keeping Politics Out of the Pulpit, Worship, Local Church
Aaron of two or three [.net] has posted on why keeping politics out of the pulpit, worship, and the local church is important for the integrity of the Church. Check out his post here.
I responded with a comment on his site:
I responded with a comment on his site:
Aaron: I obviously agree with you here.
The politicized Church is in danger of eliminating Christ from its
life.
Furthermore, this politicized Church endangers all Christians striving to
share the Good News of Jesus. Instead of trying to persuade people of Christ's
Lordship with the "gentleness and reverence" that Peter commends in the New
Testament, these political Christians thump enemies, perceived and real, with
condemnation and an air of moral superiority.
The possibility of backlash against Christianity, already somewhat
apparent, grows as the politicized Church strays further and further away from
Christ.
The cause of Christ-centered living is tarred by the sub-Christian
Pharisaism touted in the politicized Church, right and left. I hope that the
upcoming TV program gets few viewers and that Senator Frist gets the message
that this is a really bad idea.
More importantly, I hope that the Church understands how horrible it is
when we allow the Church and our proclamation of Christ to become subordinated
agents of partisan politics, instead of ambassadors for Christ!
Thanks for your post!
Blessings in Christ,
Mark Daniels
Patron Saint of Blogging?
Mark D. Roberts, among the most prolific bloggers and certainly one of the most productive blogging pastors on the web, is writing a whimsical series on who should be designated as the patron saint of blogging. It's fun, but manages to make some serious points as well.
Mark's series reminds me of my short post on who the "godfather of blogging" might be, here.
Of course, the Roman Catholic conception of sainthood is different from that held by either the New Testament or by Protestants. In Roman tradition, a person is designated as a saint only after they have died, been deemed to have lived a particularly exemplary Christian life, and are usually thought to have played a role in miracles.
But in the New Testament portion of the Bible, a saint is simply a sinner whose sins have been forgiven by virtue of Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection and the sinner's faith in Christ. Through their repentant acceptance of Christ, they're not only sinners, but saints. Saints then, are just forgiven sinners.
Several months ago, I wrote another post on the question of "praying to saints." You can find that post here.
Mark's series reminds me of my short post on who the "godfather of blogging" might be, here.
Of course, the Roman Catholic conception of sainthood is different from that held by either the New Testament or by Protestants. In Roman tradition, a person is designated as a saint only after they have died, been deemed to have lived a particularly exemplary Christian life, and are usually thought to have played a role in miracles.
But in the New Testament portion of the Bible, a saint is simply a sinner whose sins have been forgiven by virtue of Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection and the sinner's faith in Christ. Through their repentant acceptance of Christ, they're not only sinners, but saints. Saints then, are just forgiven sinners.
Several months ago, I wrote another post on the question of "praying to saints." You can find that post here.
Let's Talk About Sex
Ann Althouse links today to a New York Times profile of some Princeton University students who want to talk about sex, although some of their fellow students may wish they'd keep quiet. It's an intriguing read.
A Good Conclave Read
Malachi Martin, a former Vatican-insider, once wrote a fantastic novel which may be of particular interest as the College of Cardinals meets in conclave to select a new pope. It's called The Final Conclave. Although it's been several decades since I read it, the book, along with its themes and story line, have stuck with me all these years. If you find a copy and read it, let me know your reactions.
Why Separation of Church and State is Best for the Church and Its Cause
Also at Stones Cry Out, the web log to which Mark Sides contributes, Jim Jewell, has posted a piece triggered by an upcoming TV program that puts some local Christian churches in the thick of partisan politics. Jewell is opposed to such mixing of local churches in political affairs. I agree with him as far as he goes. But, as you'll see from the comments I posted on Stones Cry Out, I would go much further than he. Here's what I wrote:
Amen! Amen! Amen!
But I would go even further than you in my criticism of these political activities in churches.
I too am interested in political affairs and deem it the responsibility of every Christian to care about political issues. I have even run for political office myself.
But I would never push a partisan political position from the pulpit.
I would never allow a candidate or any slate of candidates to speak or distribute materials promoting their candidacies or views.
I would never allow "parachurch" organizations to come pushing political agendas, even in the name of "being prophetic."
I refuse to allow the Lord of the universe or the Gospel to be held hostage to any puny human political philosophy, no matter how "right" its adherents may deem it. And the Lord and the Gospel are held hostage and rendered subordinate whenever the Church decides to push a particular politics. Believers become enamored of power and financial clout and so, lose the power that the Carpenter from Galilee gives to all who live in simple submission to Him!
God is not a Republican. God is not a conservative.
God is not a Democrat. God is not a liberal.
Jim Wallis, James Dobson, and others all may have things to say. But God forbid them from ever daring to say, "My politics is God's politics!" That is nothing less than blasphemy!
It's time to call these politicizers of the Gospel by their proper names:
- Some are idolaters, worshiping their philosophical gods or philosophically-tinged caricatures of the real God, attempting to make God over in their own personal, pliant images.
- Some are political opportunists, playing on the inclinations, sensibilities, and predispositions of Christians in order to gain power and in some cases, cold hard cash.
- Some are Pharisees, nothing more than proof-texting ayatollahs and mullahs, bent on imposing their own particular views of Christian morality and ethics on the whole society.
Some are conservative and some are liberal and I wish that they all would just shut up because I am sure that they do not represent God.
And I wish that Jesus would, as He did to the money-changers at the temple who used faith for their own purposes, chase these cancerous leeches out of our churches!
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Forty Days of Purpose: Worshiping God, The First Purpose of Our Lives
Romans 12:1-2
Mark 12:28-30
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 17, 2005)
You’ve probably heard the story of the young guy, trying hard to impress his girlfriend, who decided to write a tribute and send it to her in an email. “For my love,” he wrote, “I’d scale the highest mountain. I’d cross the deepest ocean. I’d brave combat with the fiercest enemy. I’d give my very life just to be with you.” He signed it, “Love, Joe” and then appended this PS: “I’ll be over tonight unless there’s a ball game on TV.”
When you love someone, you want to be with them, to spend time with them, to hear their voice, and to do what’s best for them. Love is rarely measured in words alone. Even liars can come up with nice words that sound loving. Love is seen in what we do for the ones we love.
This is a lesson I learned early in our marriage. Ann would come home from work and I, still a student with one year of college left, would sit there amid dishes I hadn't cleaned and messes I hadn't cleared. "Why is this place such a mess?" she'd ask. And I'd reply, "I don't know. But I love you." If you love me, Ann was saying, then clear away this squalor!
Jesus once was asked what the greatest commandment is. He gave a two-part answer. In the first part, He said that we are to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. Giving love to God is the appropriate response for us to make to the God Who loves us completely and Who accepts us in spite of all our faults and flaws.
Loving God is really what the Bible calls worship. Our worship is to happen not just on one morning of one day of the week. Worship is meant to be our life style. God loves us. He wants to spend every moment of every day with us. And He is desperate for us to spend time getting to know Him better. This then, is the first purpose of every human life: to completely love and offer our whole selves to the God Who completely loves us and Who, through Jesus Christ, has already given Himself completely to us!
How do we do that? The first century preacher and evangelist, Paul, tells us how in one of our Bible lessons for this morning, taken from the New Testament book of Romans. Paul writes:
First: We need to remind ourselves often of how much God loves us. When we remember that, we’ll want to love and please God and be with Him all the time. Paul appeals to us to pay heed to the words he writes to the Romans because of “the mercies of God.”
It’s interesting to me that as he lay dying in his Vatican apartment a few weeks ago, Pope John Paul II asked that someone read aloud to him. He didn’t ask to be read some fairy tale, something to "take his mind off his troubles." He asked instead, that the story of Jesus’ crucifixion be read to him. There is nothing more consoling to us as we face the sometimes grim realities of life than a God Who has refused to remain standoffish in heaven while we go through the pains of earth, but has instead entered into our troubles with us. God became human. God suffered. God died. God rose again. He did this all for the love of us. When we remember this, we want to give ourselves to God!
Next, we worship God when we offer our bodies as our living sacrifices to God. We offer our bodies because, as Rick Warren points out in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, if we offer our bodies to God, everything else--our minds, our spirits, our wills--wil come along for the ride.
Living sacrifices don’t hold anything back from God. I once heard a man named Robert Coleman, a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, tell the story of a little boy whose twin brother was very sick. I’ve shared it with you before. Without a transfusion, the brother would die. The situation was explained to the little guy and he readily volunteered to have his blood drawn. Laying on a hospital bed some moments after the IV had been put in his arm, the boy turned to the doctor and asked softly, “Doctor, how much longer before I die?” It was then that the doctor realized that the boy thought that giving life to his twin brother would cause his own death. The doctor asked him, “If you thought that you were going to die, why did you say it was okay for us to draw your blood?” The boy said, “Because he’s my brother and I love him.”
Jesus Christ gave His blood–and His body–to give us life. He did it because He loves us. And in the face of such overwhelming, sacrificial love, it’s fitting that we should make ourselves living sacrifices to Him, committing ourselves to the self-giving service like His.
We also worship when we refuse to be conformed to this world and let Christ renew our minds. We need to let the God we know through Jesus Christ step into our minds and change the ways we think.
I confess that God still has a long way to go in transforming my mind. Too many of my thoughts are occupied with selfishness and sin. That’s why I keep asking God to make war on my ego and to give me a holy lobotomy so that my mind is no longer captive to wrong, but free to live as human beings were created to live. I hope to one day be like the boy from whom Jesus cast out demons, in my right mind, my God mind.
For this to happen, we need to submit to the God we know through Jesus Christ. The disciplines we’re undertaking during this Forty Days of Purpose campaign of spiritual renewal--prayer, study of God’s Word, small group discussions, opportunities for service in Jesus’ Name which will come our ways in a few weeks--all can be the means by which the renewal of our minds and lives can happen.
The first purpose of our lives is to worship God. And worship is more than just what we offer on Sunday mornings. Worship is the offering of our whole selves to God through all the moments of our lives. Worship is our response to the God Who loves us and gives new life to all who follow Jesus Christ. Worship, is how we use our lives to declare God’s greatness and goodness.
Mark 12:28-30
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 17, 2005)
You’ve probably heard the story of the young guy, trying hard to impress his girlfriend, who decided to write a tribute and send it to her in an email. “For my love,” he wrote, “I’d scale the highest mountain. I’d cross the deepest ocean. I’d brave combat with the fiercest enemy. I’d give my very life just to be with you.” He signed it, “Love, Joe” and then appended this PS: “I’ll be over tonight unless there’s a ball game on TV.”
When you love someone, you want to be with them, to spend time with them, to hear their voice, and to do what’s best for them. Love is rarely measured in words alone. Even liars can come up with nice words that sound loving. Love is seen in what we do for the ones we love.
This is a lesson I learned early in our marriage. Ann would come home from work and I, still a student with one year of college left, would sit there amid dishes I hadn't cleaned and messes I hadn't cleared. "Why is this place such a mess?" she'd ask. And I'd reply, "I don't know. But I love you." If you love me, Ann was saying, then clear away this squalor!
Jesus once was asked what the greatest commandment is. He gave a two-part answer. In the first part, He said that we are to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. Giving love to God is the appropriate response for us to make to the God Who loves us completely and Who accepts us in spite of all our faults and flaws.
Loving God is really what the Bible calls worship. Our worship is to happen not just on one morning of one day of the week. Worship is meant to be our life style. God loves us. He wants to spend every moment of every day with us. And He is desperate for us to spend time getting to know Him better. This then, is the first purpose of every human life: to completely love and offer our whole selves to the God Who completely loves us and Who, through Jesus Christ, has already given Himself completely to us!
How do we do that? The first century preacher and evangelist, Paul, tells us how in one of our Bible lessons for this morning, taken from the New Testament book of Romans. Paul writes:
"I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God–what is good and acceptable and perfect."In these few words, Paul shows us how to love God completely, how to intimately worship God twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
First: We need to remind ourselves often of how much God loves us. When we remember that, we’ll want to love and please God and be with Him all the time. Paul appeals to us to pay heed to the words he writes to the Romans because of “the mercies of God.”
It’s interesting to me that as he lay dying in his Vatican apartment a few weeks ago, Pope John Paul II asked that someone read aloud to him. He didn’t ask to be read some fairy tale, something to "take his mind off his troubles." He asked instead, that the story of Jesus’ crucifixion be read to him. There is nothing more consoling to us as we face the sometimes grim realities of life than a God Who has refused to remain standoffish in heaven while we go through the pains of earth, but has instead entered into our troubles with us. God became human. God suffered. God died. God rose again. He did this all for the love of us. When we remember this, we want to give ourselves to God!
Next, we worship God when we offer our bodies as our living sacrifices to God. We offer our bodies because, as Rick Warren points out in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, if we offer our bodies to God, everything else--our minds, our spirits, our wills--wil come along for the ride.
Living sacrifices don’t hold anything back from God. I once heard a man named Robert Coleman, a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, tell the story of a little boy whose twin brother was very sick. I’ve shared it with you before. Without a transfusion, the brother would die. The situation was explained to the little guy and he readily volunteered to have his blood drawn. Laying on a hospital bed some moments after the IV had been put in his arm, the boy turned to the doctor and asked softly, “Doctor, how much longer before I die?” It was then that the doctor realized that the boy thought that giving life to his twin brother would cause his own death. The doctor asked him, “If you thought that you were going to die, why did you say it was okay for us to draw your blood?” The boy said, “Because he’s my brother and I love him.”
Jesus Christ gave His blood–and His body–to give us life. He did it because He loves us. And in the face of such overwhelming, sacrificial love, it’s fitting that we should make ourselves living sacrifices to Him, committing ourselves to the self-giving service like His.
We also worship when we refuse to be conformed to this world and let Christ renew our minds. We need to let the God we know through Jesus Christ step into our minds and change the ways we think.
I confess that God still has a long way to go in transforming my mind. Too many of my thoughts are occupied with selfishness and sin. That’s why I keep asking God to make war on my ego and to give me a holy lobotomy so that my mind is no longer captive to wrong, but free to live as human beings were created to live. I hope to one day be like the boy from whom Jesus cast out demons, in my right mind, my God mind.
For this to happen, we need to submit to the God we know through Jesus Christ. The disciplines we’re undertaking during this Forty Days of Purpose campaign of spiritual renewal--prayer, study of God’s Word, small group discussions, opportunities for service in Jesus’ Name which will come our ways in a few weeks--all can be the means by which the renewal of our minds and lives can happen.
The first purpose of our lives is to worship God. And worship is more than just what we offer on Sunday mornings. Worship is the offering of our whole selves to God through all the moments of our lives. Worship is our response to the God Who loves us and gives new life to all who follow Jesus Christ. Worship, is how we use our lives to declare God’s greatness and goodness.
Does a Mustachioed Philtrum Render One 'Mean Looking'?
Ann Althouse thinks so. Not everyone agrees.
My two cents would be that only women with mustachioed philtrums look mean.
By the way, another question is addressed in the comments to Althouse's post: Is John Major's philtrum weird?
My two cents would be that only women with mustachioed philtrums look mean.
By the way, another question is addressed in the comments to Althouse's post: Is John Major's philtrum weird?
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