Random Stuff from Our Genesis Study, Part 14

[If this is the first installment of this series on Genesis you've seen, you deserve a little explanation. I'm a pastor of the Lutheran variety. But, as they might say in the movie, Airplane, "That's not important right now." What is important is that every week, I convene a Bible study called Tuesdays with Markie--an increasingly dated allusion to the Mitch Albion book. We've been working our way through the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis.

[The ancient rabbis considered Genesis the most important book of the Old Testament corpus. It sets the stage for every important theme in the Judeo-Christian faith. It certainly undergirds the faith of Christians. In saying that, I'm not really referencing the two creation accounts found at the beginning of the book, but themes like...

salvation not dependent on our works, but faith in a gracious God;
God's provision and care for imperfect people;
God's willingness to forgive;
the holiness of God; and so on

.[Human beings, even so-called heroes of the faith, are portrayed in all their fragile, imperfect wartiness, in this book. The effect of that is to give me hope that even an imperfect, warty sinner like me can have a relationship with the wonderful, gracious God of the Bible.

[I'm working to get these notes caught up with our actual discussions. Below this installment, you'll find links to previous posts in the series.

[By the way, right now, I've got three different series going. There's this one. There's another called Getting to Know Jesus One Chapter at a Time. And there's another on discouragement, which will appear occasionally.]

1. Genesis 31 begins with tension, a seemingly constant companion of Jacob. His brothers-in-law are complaining, saying that Jacob is doing well at his father-in-law's expense. Laban has also adopted a cool demeanor toward Jacob.

Chapter 30 tells why this has happened. For the first time, in this battle of schemers, Jacob has gotten the better of Laban. In actual fact, as Jacob will acknowledge, the advantage goes to God.

2. Jacob decides that it's time to scram. Out in the fields, Jacob conferences with his wives, the sisters, Rachel and Leah. The site was probably chosen for two reasons: (1) Shepherding is demanding work. Any farmer who has livestock can tell you that it's tough to take time away. Those animals always need attention and protection. (2) In the fields, Jacob can speak with the women away from spying ears and eyes.

This latter reason is undoubtedly the most important because Jacob proposes something drastic. He wants to take the women, their slaves, their family, and all the livestock Jacob has acquired and head back to the land where his father Isaac lives, Canaan, the land eventually promised to Abraham's descendants.

Jacob lays out his case to the women, arguing that Laban has repeatedly cheated him and that his attitude has become cooler.

Surprisingly, the women feel that their father has also mistreated them financially. They're ready to go.

Jacob and the women may seem prompted by decidedly unspiritual motives. But the Bible is an utterly honest book. It acknowledges the full panoply of human thoughts and emotions. Rachel and Leah also believe that God has decided to allow Jacob to thrive financially in spite of their father's efforts to continue taking advantage of Jacob. They further affirm that Jacob should do what God had told him to do.

This mixture of the seemingly pedestrian and pious, demonstrates one of the key components of the Judeo-Christian faith: We believe in what's called the immanence of God. God isn't far-off. When His people call, He hears. This immanence has its ultimate expression in something else that's called The Incarnation, the embodiment of God in the Person of Jesus Christ.

3. While Laban is off attending to the work of shearing his sheep, Jacob loads up his wives, children, servants, and livestock and heads back to the home of his father, Isaac. As they leave, Rachel steals her father's idols.

There is a whimsical element to this act, as often happens when the Old Testament talks about the idols worshiped by their Near East neighbors. The Hebrews were always poking fun at the manifest absurdity of worshiping finite things--be they carvings, sculptures, animals, money, success, horoscopes, people, or whatever. One of the most fun instances of this is found in Isaiah 44:9-20:

All who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit; their witnesses neither see nor know. And so they will be put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look, all its devotees shall be put to shame; the artisans too are merely human. Let them all assemble, let them stand up; they shall be terrified, they shall all be put to shame. The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers, and forging it with his strong arm; he becomes hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and is faint. The carpenter stretches a line, marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he makes it in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine. He cuts down cedars or chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, "Ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire!" The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, "Save me, for you are my god!" They do not know, nor do they comprehend; for their eyes are shut, so that they cannot see, and their minds as well, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, "Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals, I roasted meat and have eaten. Now shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?" He feeds on ashes; a deluded mind has led him astray, and he cannot save himself or say, "Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?"

But there's more than whimsy in Rachel's action. She also demonstrates contempt, if not for her father's god, at least for her father. Later, this contempt is compiled when, to prevent Laban from finding the statuette, she sits on a camel cushion in which it is hidden and explains to her father that she would stand in deference to him, but she was having her period. An ancient Hebrew might have laughed out loud at this juncture in the story. Women were considered ritually unclean and defiled during this portion of their monthly mestrual cycle. The message would have been clear: This god who can be concealed in a camel cushion is below contempt by comparison to the one God of all creation.

4. There is also great tension in this story because Jacob, unaware of Rachel's thievery, vows that whoever might be guilty of swiping Laban's god will be put to death. Rachel must live however, in order for the great tribe of Benjamin to come into being, early hearers of this story might have thought. Besides, Rachel was the love of Jacob's life. Would he have kept his vow to Laban had he determined what Rachel had done? Would Laban, her father, have let Jacob go through with it? Vows, as we have seen before in Genesis, were considered inviolable things.

Forunately, Rachel's explanation to Laban, whether true or not, was sufficient to cause him to give up on the search. Two things I can't help but wonder though are:

Did Laban keep searching for his missing god after he returned home?

What did Rachel do with the stolen god?

5. Strangely to us, in this chapter Laban upbraids Jacob for taking his--that is, Laban's--family away. Actually, because Jacob is in something of a servile relationship to Laban, the father-in-law is justified in his anger, even though Jacob has been the victim of every sort of trickery, something which might seem to negate the legitimacy of Laban's position. But buttressing Laban's argument is the fact that in his culture, the son-in-law became part of the family, the father-in-law exercising a kind of dominion over his daughters, their husbands, and their children.

(6) Ultimately though, knowing that Jacob has been blessed by his God, Laban decides not to obstruct Jacob. They covenant together and make their peace.

Politics

Whether it's espoused by liberals or conservatives from within the Church, I've always felt that political proclamations made by Christians ought to be, with rare exception, clearly labeled "just my opinion."

Clearly, Christians of all stripes can say that life is precious, irrespective of the specific ways in which they might think life should be safeguarded in the political realm.

Clearly, Christians of all stripes can agree that even if we may disagree with others' life styles, governmental authority ought not practice bias or allow it to be practiced.

But, it's essential that we Christians not subordinate keeping Christ as our Lord to any allegiance we may feel to a political philosophy, or even to our country, as much as we may love it.

Two days ago, I presented some critical comments of Dr. James Dobson, a man whose early work on family living, parenting, and marriage to be extremely valuable. But I feel that he has veered too far into the realm of identifying Christ with his own politics, thus alienating people who might otherwise be won to Christ.

In talking about politics here, it's been my aim to be fair to all sides and to discuss current political issues sometimes from the standpoint of as unbiased a Christian perspective as I could muster and at other times, from the vantage point of one who constantly reads history. (I was a Social Studies major at Ohio State also.)

But occasionally, I too have veered into overt politicizing. And, because presenting the love of Christ is my highest priority, that has been a misstep on my part. I don't want to ever convey the impression that Jesus can be bottled up or packaged in some political program. Like Aslan, the Christ figure in The Chronicles of Narnia, the God we know in Jesus Christ isn't tame, He's insusceptible to our attempts to subordinate Him to our own preferences. He's the Lion of Judah, after all. He's wild and great and powerful and in theologian Paul Tillich's phrase, "wholly other." And, as Mr. Beaver told the Pevensie kids in the first Narnian book, this wholly other Lord Who can't be tamed or made to dance to our tunes is also good. He's gracious, loving, patient, self-sacrificing.

So, I refuse to put Jesus Christ in a box. I choose to let Him have free reign in me, so that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my mind will be acceptable to God...and tell the world about this incredible God, Who accepts us we are and helps the surrendered become what He made us to be.

On this blog, I'll keep looking at the politics of politcs from time to time, often looking at the history behind what's going on today. I will try to ask people of all political stripes to be fair to those with whom they disagree. I will speak out on a few political issues when I think the will of God is crystal clear. And, when politics and faith intersect--on issues like the Ten Commandments in public places, for example--I may have some things to say.

But I don't want to be a Jim, Dobson or Wallis. I'm sorry if I've ever edged into such territory. Let me know if you think I do so in the future.

UPDATE: I will also talk about other stuff in life, things like music, baseball, movies, books, TV, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, U2, Coldplay, the Boys and Girls Club, and such. I'm interested in all of life!

Dr. Dobson, Please Quit Playing This Dangerous Game!

James Dobson is playing a dangerous game.

It's not the one that he, with melodrama and perhaps unintended self-aggrandizement is playing, though. He worries that the reassurances he's issuing to listeners to his daily radio program that Harriet Miers will be a "good justice" may result in his having the blood of dead babies on his hands. (See here.)

No, I think by playing the role to which he aspires in our nation's politics, he risks losing the eternal lives of millions who will be turned off by his subordination of Jesus Christ to his brand of politics and political activism. Unaware of what Jesus is really like, they may think that Dobson isn't subordinating Jesus to his politics. They may think that the pushy, obnoxious, coercive Jesus that James Dobson commends is the real deal.

Already, many surmise that Dobson, with his megaphone and political connections, speaks for Christ and the Christian faith and so think that one must be a conservative Republican in order to be accepted in the Kingdom of God. How many millions are repudiating the Gospel because of his cartoon caricature of Christianity can only be guessed. It deeply saddens me!

Now though, he's claiming to have inside information and implies that he's received back channel assurances that Harriet Miers will vote the way he and many of his supporters believe that she should if Roe v. Wade comes back before the Court.

If you want people to know and follow Jesus Christ, Dr. Dobson, please quit playing this game. Focus on introducing people to Christ and trust that the Holy Spirit will transform their hearts to make the horrors that sadden and repulse you...and me...unthinkable.

This approach, the approach of humbly, lovingly sharing Christ with others, is the way Jesus commends that our mission as His followers be done. It requires faith, humility, love, and patience. But in the end, it will win over more hearts and minds than taking the levers of political and judicial power and forcing our will down other people's throats ever could!

For more, see here and here.

Sunday Night This and That

Today was John Lennon's birthday. Had he lived he would have been sixty-five years old. Yeah, Lennon was a jerk. But he had a great sense of melody and wrote some wonderful songs. It was his vision that originally created the Beatles. His songwriting partner, Paul McCartney, continues to be a vital, rocking creative force and I'm sure that had he not been cut down at age 40, Lennon would be the same today.

This past week, I attended the Midwest Regional Leadership Conference of the Boys and Girls Club of America. (I'm board vice president of the Boys and Girls Club of Clermont County.) The Club movement is definitely worthy of your involvement and support. They make a difference in the lives of young people. Wherever there are clubs in this country--in cities, small towns, or rural areas, youth crime goes down, youth crime victimization goes down, and youth pregnancies decrease and kids perform better in school, complete their educations more, attend and complete college more, and stay out of trouble more.

The keynote speaker for our conference was former Dodger and Padre great, Steve Garvey. For ten years, Garvey played for the Dodgers, back when they were in the same National League division as my beloved Cincinnati Reds. For eight of the ten years of the 1970s, either the Reds or the Dodgers won the divisional title and Garvey, with his lifetime .296 average was always in the thick of things. Before he spoke, I approached him at the table where he was seated by himself, awaiting the beginning of the luncheon. "I just had to introduce myself to the guy who made my life miserable as a Reds fan," I told him. Garvey stood and graciously spoke with me for about five minutes. In his speech and in his interactions with people later, Garvey was absolutely a class act.

Yes, I'm disappointed tonight that my Buckeyes were unable to beat Penn State's Nittany Lions last night! The defenses of both teams were spectacular.

Prayers Are Needed Again

For the victims of the south Asia earthquake.

Authentic Faith and the Bible

Psalm 23
[This message was shared with the people of Friendship Church on October 9, 2005.]

The author Flannery O’Connor once told a story which, the first time I read it, was retold by the late Lutheran theologian, Joseph Sittler. Sittler loved it and after retelling it, reflected on its meaning.

It’s the story of an elderly couple who lived in the Appalachians, surrounded by breathtaking views. They were accustomed to sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch of their home for as long as the weather allowed, simply taking in the same sights they’d seen hundreds of days before in their long married life. One spring day, they were doing the same thing, silently rocking and looking.

“Well, Sarah,” the husband said to his wife. “I see there’s still some snow up there on the mountain.” [Sittler then reflects:] Now they both knew that there would still be some snow on that mountain at this time of the year; there always was. So why did he say so? Because just to know that at times there’s snow, while at other times there isn’t, was to be able to embrace the shifting but eternal rhythms of life that had made them so content with each other’s company. In any marriage or intimate relationship you may say the same things, just like that, time after time; you may share a profound and compassionate interest in the same people. And while, on the one hand, this might seem so...boring; on the other hand it is simply breathtaking in its way of affirming the joy of life, and of living with someone that you love.

They say that familarity breeds contempt. It can also breed indifference. But if we let it, as was true of this old couple, familiarity can also breed things that are wonderful--”breathtaking,” as Sittler puts it: comfort, confidence, and assurance, for example.

One of the most familiar chapters in the entire Bible is Psalm 23. To prove it, a preacher I read about this past week did something I’m going to do right now. I’ll recite the first clause of a phrase and out loud, you finish it.

“The Lord is my shepherd....”

“He makes me lie down in...”

“Even though I walk through the valley of...”

“Surely goodness and mercy shall...”

You see, you are familiar with Psalm 23.

And yet, I wonder if our familiarity with Psalm 23 and with the entire Bible from which it comes has bred in us comfort, confidence, and assurance, as it should do, or indifference? Almost everybody owns a Bible. But not many of us read it, digest it, study it, absorb it, or give it a central place in our lives. We don’t allow the Bible the time it needs to help us know the God Who wants to be our good shepherd or to teach us what difference that makes.

If we did, more churches would be more vibrant centers of mission.

More of we Christians would be making sounder decisions about our lives.

More of us would be loving and serving our neighbors.

More of us would be engaged in ministries, serving Christ through our churches.

And more of us would be inviting others to worship and to know Jesus Christ.

You see, authentic faith, faith that helps us face everyday living and gives us hope forever, is strengthened when we read God’s love letter to the human race: the Bible.

Another familiar passage from the Psalms confesses to God, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and light to my path.”

And in the New Testament, the apostle Paul reminds a young pastor named Timothy, “There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of the Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another--showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.”

Today, world leaders are holding their breath, waiting for a viral strain known as H5N1 or the Avian Flu virus to mutate, making it possible for this deadly disease to be passed along from human to human, which it currently can’t do. Public health officials tell us that this disease, which is fatal 50% of the time and takes only three days to kill a person, could bring death to anywhere between 5- and 150-million people worldwide. Repetitions of events like September 11 in this country, March 11 in Madrid, the bombings in London, last December’s tsunami, the recent hurricanes along our Gulf Coast and in Central America, and the earthquake that just hit south Asia combined aren’t as threatening to the world as an Avian Flu pandemic could be. That’s why national leaders are drawing up plans to deal with this threat. It would be pure foolishness for them not to make such plans.

Christians who don’t read and study the Bible regularly--or who don’t worship regularly, pray regularly, fellowship with others regularly, or receive the blessings that go with service, giving, and inviting others to worship with them regularly--are setting themselves up for disaster.

We live in an imperfect world. Bad things happen. Temptations come to us. Accidents and disease may come to us. Relational discord may come to us. If we’re not reading God’s Word as a regular part of our daily routine--or engaged in the other habits of real life discipleship that we’re considering right now, life will knock us flat as quickly as the Avian Flu takes its victims or as the tsunami wiped out so many last year.

In a way, the message of the whole Bible is summed up well in Psalm 23. Psalm 23 tells us five important things about God, our good shepherd:

• that He provides for us;
• that He allows us to be at ease, confident that if we will let Him into our lives, He’s with us no matter what;
• that He gives us life;
• that He stands with us in dark times, even when we die; and
• that He welcomes us to be with Him forever.

I sometimes hear people say, “Well, I believe in God. What do I need to mess with reading the Bible or worshiping or any of the other so-called disciplines of the Christian life for? If I’m freed from sin and death simply for believing in Jesus, I don’t need all that stuff.”

Let me tell you a true story.

Shortly after I learned how to ride a bicycle, I begged my Mom to send me on an errand to Gus’ IGA near the corner of Central and Sullivant Avenues in the section of Columbus called the Bottoms, where we lived at the time. I had a little twenty-four inch, beat-up blue Schwinn bike, a hand-me-down from my cousins. I’d grown tired of using it just to tool around the neighborhood or the blacktop in front of the warehouse behind our place.

Besides, Gus had a daughter named Mary Ann and she absolutely made my eight year old heart go pitter-pat.

My mother was resistant to the whole idea of my trekking to Gus' store. Sullivant and Central were busy thoroughfares.

But one day she’d started to fix something and she realized that she didn’t have a key ingredient on hand, tomatoes--for one of my favorite dishes to this day, Johnny Marzetti. My two year old sister Kathy needed attending and for some reason, we were down to one car at the time. So, Mom felt she had no choice but to send me to Gus’ for the tomatoes. She called me in from playing baseball out in the alley to give me my mission.

I was psyched out of my mind! Here was an important errand I could run on my own...and I might get to see Mary Ann in the bargain. “Remember, sliced tomatoes in the can,” my mother called out to me as I climbed onto my bike and pedaled off.

By the time I got to Gus’ five minutes later, I had completely forgotten what I was supposed to buy. I had to ask Gus to dial my home number--BR9-0502, so that I could ask my mother to repeat her order. After I got off the phone and had paid for the tomatoes, I asked where Mary Ann was and learned she wasn’t even around. A little disappointed, but still proud to be on such an important mission, I started riding back home.

I decided to approach my street, Thomas Avenue, by way of an alley that had a major incline to it. I suppose you'd say a major decline because it sloped down to Thomas. I started riding down that hill without looking to my right or left, just rolling downhill to the street. A car came along just as I approached the end of the hill. Boom! I hit the side of that passing car. Fortunately, neither I or the car were hurt. But I didn’t tell my mother what had happened until years later.

Now, here’s the point: In the blink of an eye, I had forgotten that I was supposed to get tomatoes. I’d forgotten that I should look both ways when turning onto a street. I’d even forgotten, apparently, how to use my brakes. I was so consumed with thoughts of being a big shot and of seeing Mary Ann, that the important things I knew and needed to remember got crowded out of my brain.

The same thing can happen to you and me when it comes to the most important thing in the world, our relationship with Jesus Christ. We can become so consumed with everyday life that we forget our Good Shepherd and our daily need of Him. Reading and studying God’s Word is one important tool God uses to daily remind us to keep building our lives on Him and His promises.

People of real faith read God’s Word regularly because we know we need these reminders. In a bad news world, it’s too easy to forget the Good News of God’s love, given to us through Jesus Christ.

Make daily Bible reading, guided maybe by the devotions in Our Daily Bread, a regular part of your life.

And why not join us this Tuesday for our weekly Bible study?

Don’t let your familiarity with the Bible breed indifference. Spend time with God through the Bible and you will know God better and you’ll be ready for your mission and you'll be ready to face whatever life brings your way!

A Caffeinated List of Blogging Alternatives

I came home from the Tuesday night Bible study wanting to do some reading and watch the Yankees-Angels game with a soft drink and some popcorn. But I was out of my beloved 7-Up and had to drink caffeinated Coke. So, I'm up, unable to sleep.

I decided that since I may not be able to post on Thursday through Saturday of this week, I'd give you a list of some blogs you might want to explore in my absence. The list doesn't mean I give them blanet endorsements. But there's interesting stuff in them. Here goes...

All Others Must Bring Data (A Boston sports fan shares his passions)
Pools of Grace
Dana Roc's Blog
Lenscape
Tomorrow's Trends
My Best Gadgets
6ft.10ft.2ft.com
Letting me be...random wondering and philosophy

If these aren't enough to sate your blog appetite, check out the Blogroll on the left side of the page.

Discouragement and 'Mr. Nice Guy'

His sudden death, seemingly in the prime of life, had come as a shock to his wife and family. One phrase was used repeatedly to describe him. "He was a nice guy," everyone said.

As someone who had informally counseled with him, I knew this to be true. But I knew something else about him: He was deeply discouraged and unhappy.

"I'm everybody's doormat," he told me. "It's not that I mind doing things for others. It's that people expect me to drop everything and do for them whenever they need help. But I never seem able to muster the courage to ask anyone else to help me."

He revealed that he was so burdened by the obligation he felt to please others that he couldn't imagine ever striving to achieve the goals he had for his life, even those he felt certain God had planted in his mind.

Mr. Nice Guy, a deeply committed Christian, would then hang his head in shame for these supposedly "unchristian" thoughts. He thought that he was called to be a nice guy/pleaser/doormat.

Of course, we should all be interruptible, open to opportunities to do loving deeds for others. Jesus says that whenever we care for those who need care, we're really serving Him. Such service can be a way of fulfilling Jesus' call to "love others as we love ourselves."

But it's been my experience that people don't fall into the doormat way of living, which is really a life style of slavery, out of gratitude for the love God offers through Jesus, the proper motive for Christian service. Jesus' love doesn't enslave us, but liberates us to become our best selves.

Pleasers though, seem to be motivated by one or more of several different desires:

• Keeping others from becoming angry with them
• Placating those already angry with them
• Avoiding confrontation, creating an atmosphere of false placidness in which differences are swept under the rug, the pleaser accepting servitude without a whimper
• Getting people to like them
• Getting people to depend on them
  
• Subtly soliciting and receiving compliments
• Making others feel beholden to them, even if the pleaser's desire to be perceived as being competent may prevent them from ever "calling in their chits"
• Feeling powerful, capable of doing for others what they won't or can't do for themselves
• Feeling competent

Notice that there isn't a benevolent or loving impulse in the entire list! That's because much of what motivates people to be inveterate pleasers is the elevation of the self. Often, nice-guyism is at least partially motivated not by love for others, but by the desire to be indispensable. (I know because I've wrestled with being my own version of Mr. Nice Guy!)

"If I can be nice enough to everyone," the pleaser subconsciously thinks, "they'll all like me, they'll do what I want them to do, and my life will be easier."

Behind all the nice person's efforts to please everyone is self-loathing. Inside, there's a quaking child with a gaping hole that the pleaser tries to fill with the trophies of others' appreciation and compliments. But such self-aggrandizing approaches to life simply don't work!

In the next installment of this series on discouragement, I'll talk about what I'm starting to learn does work or can work, if we let it.

The Problem with Stealth Supreme Court Justices

In earlier describing Harriet Miers, the President's nominee for the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, as a "stealth nominee," I wasn't disparaging Miers' candidacy or qualifications for the Court.

When one considers it, Miers probably has more relevant experience for service there than O'Connor had when Ronald Reagan nominated her. The soon-retiring justice had been a state court judge in Arizona and before that, a member of the state legislature. Miers has been the senior partner in a major law firm, a member of a City Council, and counsel to a governor and a President.

It isn't essential that members of the Court have experience as judges. (In fact, the Constitution doesn't even require them to be lawyers, leading me to sometimes speculate on what would happen to the deliberations of the justices if they were leavened by the participation of non-lawyers.) Rehnquist, as has been pointed out many times today, wasn't a judge prior to his nomination for an Associate Justice slot in 1971. Earl Warren was a former California governor.

I've been reading the late Roy Jenkins' profile of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency and just last evening, went through his brief account of FDR's controversial plan to add one new justice to the Supreme Court for every then-sitting member who was seventy years of age or older. Of course, Roosevelt's plan, never really embraced by his own administration and ultimately rejected by a Congress overwhelmingly controlled by his fellow Democrats, was triggered by his frustration that the Court was ruling many of his New Deal prescriptions for the ailing US economy unconstitutional.

According to Jenkins, FDR would have been better off to have simply waited for the Court's membership to turn over, rather than expending precious second-term political capital on a futile battle. Within a short period, the President had what can surely be described as a Roosevelt Court:

In place of [Willis] Devanter he appointed the young senator Hugo Black. Then, in the next few years, Supreme Court vacancies occurred like November's falling leaves. The president was able to appoint his own solicitor general, Stanley Reed; Felix Frankfurter, a Harvard academic; William O. Douglas, an equally liberal Yale academic; Attorney General Frank Murphy; Senator James Byrnes of South Carolina, later to be Truman's not entirely satisfactory secretary of state; and Robert Jackson, Murphy's replacement as attorney general.

There are several points to this little history lesson:

1. The justices nominated and confirmed during Roosevelt's tenure fairly reflect the varied walks of life that have usually been represented on the Supreme Court. Black and Byrnes were politicians; Frankfurter and Douglas were scholars; Reed, Jackson, and Murphy were lawyers with political experience. They weren't all White House lawyers whose views were known only to those who served with them in the Executive Branch. All of these nominees had extensive public records whether in political decisions or legal scholarship. These were people who had taken sides and everybody knew what sides they had taken. That didn't prevent them from being confirmed.

2. The standards to which judges were held in those days were both more political and less ideological. It was assumed that Presidents would nominate people for membership on the Court who were more or less sympathetic to the President's basic philosophy.

In making these two points, I'm not criticizing this President Bush or his father for nominating stealth candidates to the Court. In the poisonous atmosphere which has often surrounded Supreme Court nominations over the past thirty years, Presidents have their reasons for offering up persons with scant public records who they believe will reflect their views, but not attract opposition or controversy on the way to being confirmed.

In John Roberts and Harriet Miers, the President has put forward two people with whom he and the members of his administration are familiar, but who don't have a boatload of "incriminating evidence" that potential opponents--on the right or the left--might use against them.

The result is a process in which little information is shared, the President and his administration winkingly ask their supporters to trust them, and an opposition, often driven by purely ideological motives, is frustrated.

Harriet Miers may be confirmed and she may turn out to be a great justice. She seems competent and hard working. But one day, a stealth nominee is going turn out to be a massive failure not because their judgments displease people, but because of incompetence which a strangely-constricted confirmation process doesn't surface.

So, How About Some Encouragement?

I wrote earlier on discouragement and antidotes for this common experience. Below are links to a series I wrote some months ago:

The Power of Encouragement, Part 1: The Impact of Encouragers

The Power of Encouragement, Part 2: Encouraging without Words

The Power of Encouragement, Part 3: Principles for Parents

The Power of Encouragement, Part 4: Encouraging Leaders

The Power of Encouragement, Part 5: The Ultimate Source of Encouragement

The Power of Encouragement, Part 6: A Community of Encouragement

Discouragement and Some Antidotes

I've been thinking lately about discouragement. (That's partly because I've been wrestling with feeling a bit discouraged about a few things in my life and because I've been dealing with lots of other folks coping with some sizeable cases of discouragement.)

This morning, in an unsystematic way, I jotted down a few things that cause discouragement. The list includes:

1. Things not going the ways we want them to go
2. People not cooperating with us
3. Being taken for granted by others
4. Persistent failure (or the perception of persistent failure)
5. Taking the short view of things
6. Feeling that nothing we do matters
7. Financial difficulties
8. Insufficient reliance on God
9. Shame, something that comes to us when we either refuse to accept God's forgiveness for past sins or when we have sinned and refuse to repent, allowing the sin to become part of our personal make-ups.

Here are a few antidotes for discouragement that I listed:

1. Altering our expectations. Notice I didn't say "lowering" our expectations! One example of altered expectations would include accepting that things don't always go our ways and so, having the humility and sense of humor to try our best and let the chips fall where they may, as the saying goes.

Another might be accepting that, contrary to the Coldplay song, Fix You, we can't fix other people or make them do what we want them to do. Why would we aspire to be such control freaks that we would want to "fix" people anyway?

2. Accepting that I'm not God. I believe it was Chuck Swindoll who first alerted me to two fundamental facts about life that lead both to sanity and faith: God is God; I'm not.

3. Learning to pray and really mean, "Your will be done." That's the central and most important petition of the Lord's Prayer, the template prayer taught by Jesus.

Don't misunderstand: There is a difference between faith and fatalism! But once we've prayed and tried our hardest--in our relationships, in our work, and so on, we need to be able to let it go and to let God be in charge.

4. Related to #3, rely on God. One of the most common prayers I'm offering to God these days is a simple one: "Help!" or "Help so and so!" or "Help me!" I used to try to micromanage God, describing in detail how I thought he should go about helping me or others. But if it's true that God is God and I'm not, this is a bit presumptuous.

What, someone might ask, about the statement in the Old Testament that if we approach God in prayer, He'll give us the desires of our hearts?

I believe that the deeper we go in our relationships with God, the more our desires will be reflective of His will and even when they're not, our greatest desire will be that God's will be done.

Besides, there is absolutely nothing wrong with telling God what we want, so long as we're willing to accept that He may have better ideas than we do. (The may in that last sentence is meant to be ironic, folks.)

5. When daunted by a seeming profusion of failures, count your successes. The old Irving Berlin song sung by Bing Crosby in the movie, White Christmas, says, "When I grow weary and I can't sleep/I count my blessings instead of sheep/And I fall asleep, counting my blessings."

Homely advice? Terminally unhip? Yes and yes. But still valid advice. When things are going poorly, it's easy to fall prey to thinking that everything always has been and always will be lousy. Remembering blessings reminds us that this isn't true.

Some people I know keep their prayers in a notebook and as each one is answered, sometimes in ways they never would have anticipated, they make note of the answers and the dates on which they learned of these blessings.

Years ago, I began a habit of putting all the thank you notes I receive into file folders. When I'm feeling discouraged, I leaf through those notes. They remind me that I'm not as incompetent or unworthy as I might be feeling in my discouraged state.

However you do it, counting your successes--so long as you don't take too much credit for them--is one more antidote for discouragement.

6. Because some forms of discouragement stem from sin and its consequences, repentance and acceptance of God's grace is another antidote for discouragement.

God is gracious. That means that He has our best interests at heart and that in spite of our imperfections, He willingly forgives those who turn from their sin (which is what repentance means) and sends His Holy Spirit to help them avoid that sin in the future.

There's a big difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is God's way of getting our attention. The person without a capacity for guilt can't sense forgiveness or know the joy of having God renew them. Guilt drives us to the God we know in Christ, where we can find brand new starts and God's love for us.

A passage in the New Testament says this:

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 us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (First John 1:9-10)

Shame, on the other hand, walls us off from God. It makes us think that we are our sin, makes us despair, overwhelmed by the seeming futility of our lives.

We need to let God love us to restoration and healing.

Just a few thoughts on discouragement and how to combat it.

Miers: Another Stealth Nominee?

Two things strike me about the revelation that President Bush intends to nominate his White House counsel, Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

First, I'm struck by the fact that this story broke before an official White House announcement. Aides leaked it to the press before the Communications office confirmed that on Sunday night, Mr. Bush offered the nomination to Miers.

In past administrations, this wouldn't be a surprise. But the Bush 2 White House has been relatively leak-proof. Was this a trial balloon? Or has the once-vaunted discipline of the administration begun to erode?

There are probably good arguments one could advance to answer yes to either of these questions.

I'm also struck with how little anyone seems to really know about Miers at this point. That will probably change quickly. While she may not have judicial paper trail--she's never been a judge--she does have a public record. She served, for example, on the Dallas city council and as chair of the Texas Lottery Commission. Democrats, under pressure to placate liberal interest groups, will undoubtedly go through that record with a fine tooth comb.

Certain conservative groups, apparently concerned that Chief Justice Roberts will turn out to be a closet liberal, will also be exerting pressure on Republican senators to make sure that Miers votes their way once she's on the Court. But it seems to me that just as it was wrong to exact pledges from Roberts on how he would vote as a member of the Court, it would be wrong to seek promises from Miers.

In a way, it seems that Miers, like Roberts before her, is a variation of the stealth nominee strategy that began with Justice Souter's appointment to the Court. Ideological pressure groups, feeling that the stakes are even higher when it comes to choosing the successor of Sandra Day O'Connor, will severely test whether the strategy can continue to work.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt writes, "Harriet Miers isn't a Justice Souter pick, so don't be silly. It is a solid, B+ pick. The first President Bush didn't know David Souter, but trusted Chief of Staff Sunnunu and Senator Rudman. The first President Bush got burned badly because he trusted the enthusiams of others."

Speaking only for myself, when I compared this nomination to that of Souter, it had nothing to do with either how well this President knew this nominee or whether Miers might be a "closet liberal." I meant only that there are no apparent red flags inviting opposition from the opposition party to her nomination.

Hillary, the Methodist

This profile of Senator Hillary Clinton may be a puff job by the New York Times. But I was intrigued by it nonetheless. And I find one of its central assertions, that Mrs. Clinton's views that abortion is a tragic option that should be exercised rarely, her concerns about film violence and sexual explicitness, and that morality matters don't stem from a desire to shift to the center, but genuinely-held beliefs, plausible.

Like Mrs. Clinton, I spent formative years of my youth in the Methodist Church. With missionary zeal, Methodists have historically not only striven for evangelization of the world and the internal spiritual transformation of believers, but to put that faith in action through social ministries. That spirit of do-goodism, a description I use with appreciation, is something that the young Hillary Rodham could have imbibed as much as the Goldwater Republicanism to which she once adhered.

None of this is to say that I see Senator Clinton's politics as being Christian any more than I see President Bush's in this way. But the probable spiritual roots of her views on a range of subjects are as likely to be imbued with Christian sensibilities as those of the President. God isn't a Republican or a Democrat. God is God and it's not right to trivialize Him by putting him in partisan pigeonholes.

Real Worshiping

Philippians 3:4b-14
[This message was shared with the people of Friendship Church on October 2, 2005.]

This past week, a new law went into effect in the state of Maryland. It says that within the first five months of receiving their licenses, new drivers under the age of eighteen may not have any minor passengers with them unless a seasoned driver is also in the vehicle. Besides that, the law says that new drivers may not operate any electronic devices, including cell phones, while driving. The intention, of course, is to force the new drivers to focus on the demanding job of driving.

I suspect that some Maryland teens may regard this as a terribly unfair law, even though some of us might think that it would be good if such restrictions were placed on drivers of every age. But if that happened, there would be a huge outcry, such as occurred when cell phone use while driving was banned in New York City a few years ago. We seem to view doing lots of things as once, or multi-tasking, as it’s called, as our constitutional right.

But this multi-tasking stuff doesn’t always work so well. Presbyterian pastor and theologian Mark Roberts, who I’m looking forward to meeting at a conference for Christian bloggers in the Los Angeles area in a few weeks, enjoyed seeing the remake of the old movie, Cheaper by the Dozen, a few years ago. Mark writes that while there was a lot of the juvenile slapstick you might have expected, the film also conveys a serious point:

In scene after scene, the father of 12 children, Tom Baker, played by Steve Martin, is being multi tasked to death as he attempts to balance the impossible demands of work and family. Now I don’t have 12 children, thank God, but sometimes I feel almost as out of sorts as Tom Baker.

When we’ve got so much going on in life, when voices all around us clamor for our attention, it’s easy to lose focus. We can forget why we’re here and what we’re living for. We end up charging off in all directions at once, and arriving at none of them.

That’s true, isn’t it? We live in a world of wonders, filled with all sorts of delights and possibilities, career paths and hobbies, entertainments and enterprises that are worthy of attention, dedication, and passion. Many things cry for our attention. At the end of Cheaper by the Dozen, Tom Baker, decides to leave behind his promising career as a head football coach in order to spend more time with his children. He forswore the good to embrace the better.

You and I are called to do that kind of thing every day. It’s exactly what the writer of our Bible lesson for this morning, the first century preacher and evangelist, Paul, is talking about. Paul wrote these words to the church in the Greek city of Philippi.

A group of persuasive preachers had come to the Philippians and thrown them into doubt about their standing with God. They wondered if they really belonged Christ or if they would be with God in eternity.

That’s because these preachers had told them that it wasn’t enough for them to believe in Jesus, to trust Him with their lives. They told the Philippians that they also must become practicing Jews. The men would be required to be circumcised, for example, and all would have to observe the rituals and the laws of the Jewish religion.

The Philippian Christians had probably once been stirred by the truth that Jesus shared in John 3:16, telling that God had loves all of us so much that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will live with God forever.

Now, here was this gang telling them that their belief in Jesus was okay, but now they also had to jump through religious hoops. Otherwise, God wouldn’t love them and they wouldn't be with God forever.

Martin Luther used to say that any time a person tells you that Christian faith consists of "Jesus and..." anything, they're not talking about Christian faith. Not even if it's "Jesus and" the very best things of which you can think. Rightness with God doesn't come from "Jesus and being a good person," or "Jesus and your family," or "Jesus and community service." Salvation and rightness with God have to do with only one thing, Jesus.

Paul said that these people who were commending circumcision, ritual observance, and good works in addition to Jesus were following the way of this flesh-and-blood world, not the God we know in Jesus Christ.

When Paul got wind of what the Philippians had been told and were starting to believe, he was furious!

These false preachers were taking their spiritual confidence away from the Philippian Christians. Our confidence as followers of Jesus has nothing to do with the things we do and everything to do with what Jesus Christ has already done for us from a cross and an empty tomb!

This is the way Paul expresses himself to the Philippians:

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

In other words, Paul is saying, “All these people commanding you to conform to all legalistic provisions to be right with God are off the beam. I was a better Jew than any of these so-called Judaizers. I had climbed up the ladder of Judaism. I was a religious superstar!”

But, Paul wants them to know that he considers all that religion stuff to be “rubbish” compared to what he had through Jesus Christ: the gift of an everlasting relationship with God not based on anything he could do, but only on what Christ has done for us already. Our translation puts it a bit too daintily, by the way. Paul didn't say that he regarded his old life as mere rubbish. The word literally can be translated as excrement. That's what a life devoted to self-elevating works--even good religious works--is like compared to having faith in the Savior Jesus Who gives us everything worth having for free!

Then, Paul talks about the choice he has made in response to the incredible free gifts of life, forgiveness, love, hope, and confidence that comes through Jesus Christ. Paul isn’t going to multi-task with his life. He’s going to choose make following Christ his highest priority through all the ups and downs of life.

He writes:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Folks, last week, we said that authentic faith means worshiping God every day of our lives. Today, Paul reminds us that living lives worshiping God--knowing Jesus and moving toward being like Him--entails making Him the focus of our lives.

Pastor Mike Foss tells the true story of a business executive in his congregation. Says Foss:

John’s life and career were on the upswing. He had just closed a major deal that lead to a large bonus. Membership in the country-club, driving a luxury SUV, and having a fine home and cabin up north, just seemed to be standard fare for one whose accomplishments were so many and frequent. Then it happened: his wife was diagnosed with a terminal disease. Putting his career temporarily on hold, he made certain that she got the very best medical care and, when he didn’t like the diagnosis and treatment plan, he took her to a world-class medical center. But the doctors all seemed to come to the same conclusion: she would die after a long time of decline. They recommended that he put her in a nursing home, visit her regularly, and go back to his career. But John couldn’t do that. Every time he looked at her, he didn’t see the sickness—he saw the woman...he loved, the partner in life with whom he had shared family and faith. And after one night of restless prayer, he made his decision. He quit his [job] to care for her, saying, “I’ll never get a chance to love her again. But I can always go back to work.” So, he sold his cabin and house and moved her to a single-level simple home where he loved her until the end.

What that man did was an act of worship. No, he wasn’t worshiping his wife. There may in fact be times when our devotion to Jesus Christ will necessitate our giving attention to things other than our families. I think that many parents today are not being very loving toward their children by their willingness to drop everything whenever their kids want attention. Our children cannot learn to put God and others first, they cannot learn to be responsible, loving adults, if their parents always cater to their kids’ desires. Nor do we help our kids by enabling them in being selfish or inconsiderate or by bailing them out every time they make a bad decision.

Authentic worship of the God we know with Jesus Christ entails responding to Christ’s love by letting His priorities, His ways, and His love overtake every aspect of our lives. That’s what did John when he put his career behind and stretched out for the way of Jesus.

Every day, we must choose: Christ or me? Christ or my ego? Christ or my priorities? Humbly following Christ or following the religion that makes the world think me pious? Or for our teens perhaps, following Christ or impressing those around me? Every day, we’re called to follow Jesus rather than the world. And this isn’t something we can multi-task. We can’t follow the risen and living Jesus and a selfish and dying world at the same time. We will either have all of Jesus or none of Him.

To have none of Him is unthinkable. To have all of Him is to have everything that really matters for all eternity.

Response to a Reasonable Question: Why Do You Believe Christian Faith is True

Here are the links to a serire of posts I wrote that explain why I, a former atheist, believe in Jesus Christ. I hope that you enjoy them. Feel free to leave your comments.

Why I Believe Christian Faith is True, Part 1
Why I Believe Christian Faith is True, Part 2
Why I Believe Christian Faith is True, Part 3
Why I Believe Christian Faith is True, Part 4
Why I Believe Christian Faith is True, Part 5
Why I Believe Christian Faith is True, Part 6

Weightiness and Nonchalance, the Unexpected Connection

Doris at Grans on Bran posts about a BBC look at the word, tingo. The comments that ensue deal with odd words in the English language.

One of the oddest English words is nonchalant. If non is a negative prefix in this world, as it is in others, then to be nonchalant is to exhibit behaviors that are the opposite of those seen in people who are chalant. But whoever heard of a person being described in that way, except maybe in fun?

The word chalant isn't in the English dictionary. Anyone described as such would presumably be extemely nervous and high-strung.

But, I've learned that, as I suspected, the word comes from the French. Dictionary.com says in explaining the derivation of nonchalant:

"[French, from Old French, present participle of nonchaloir, to be unconcerned : non-, non- + chaloir, to cause concern to (from Latin calre, to be warm, heat up. See kel-1 in Indo-European Roots).]"

So, it would seem that being chalant, if ever one were struck by this condition, would have something to do with kel, the Latin prefix from which the word, calories is derived.

And here I thought that the French didn't worry about getting fat!

Random Stuff from Our Genesis Study, Part 13

[I'm continuing to try to catch up in presenting these notes. Feel free to send comments, ideas, or questions. Quotes below are from The Message, Eugene Peterson's wonderful paraphrase of the Bible.]

1. Genesis 30 opens with a scene which, from the perspective of our modern sensibilities, may make little sense. Rachel, seeing that her sister, Leah, the other wife of her husband, Jacob, is having children--"popping them out like a Pez dispenser," in the words of a conference speaker I once heard--becomes desperate. "Give me sons or I'll die!" she tells Jacob.

This isn't Rachel being a drama queen. As I explained in the last post of this series, not having children was regarded as a curse from God and having them as God's blessing. Since Jacob was clearly "successful" in conceiving children with Leah, Rachel felt that she was being judged. Yet, with these imploring words seem to deflect the blame or responsibility onto Jacob. One can be sympathetic for Rachel; her circumstances may have been unbearable to her.

Adding to Rachel's agony is the fact that, in those days. baby-making wasn't considered successful if sons weren't produced. Only males could own any significant amount of property or, in the case of first-born sons, inherit it from fathers. A widow was often destitute, forced, because of limited options, to either find another husband or become a prostitute.

For all these reasons--competition with her sister, feeling judged by God, wanting to provide for her future--Rachel is desperate to have sons.

2. Jacob reacts angrily to Rachel's words. His retort demonstrates that he believes that God has decided heretofore not to allow Rachel to conceive. But he also effectively puts the blame on Rachel. "Am I God?" he asks her. "Am I the one who refused you babies?"

These words must have been cruel blows for Rachel! They may even have been intended to be cruel. Time and again, Jacob proves to be a most imperfect person. But like the Christian woman who was nonetheless a fanatical bridge player, a competitive ogre, mentioned by C.S. Lewis in his classic, Mere Christianity, one is forced to ask, "If Jacob is this bad with God in his life, how much worse might he be without that relationship?"

3. In her childlessness, Rachel resorts to the same ploy used by Jacob's grandmother, Sarah, when she was childless. "Here's my maid Bilhah. Sleep with her," she tells Jacob. This, as I mentioned when discussing Abraham and Sarah's maid, Hagar, comports with a custom of the time. Servants were regarded as the possessions of their masters and mistresses. If a mistress was childless, she could give her maidservant to her husband and the child that issued from the pairing was then regarded as belonging to the mistress and her husband.

4. Bilhah successfully conceives and bears Jacob several sons. Unlike Sarah when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael, Rachel shows no resentment toward Bilhah for being able to give Jacob sons and no fear that Hagar and Ishmael might supplant her in Jacob's affections.

Each son is given a significant name.

5. Leah, always second-fiddle in this dysfunctional family, finds her competitive juices roused when she sees that while she wasn't conceiving, Rachel's maid was. So, she gives her maid, Zilpah, to Jacob. (One wonders whether Jacob wasn't perpetually worn out from all these sexual pairings, tired of living in a domestic war zone, or perhaps, pleased with things. His feelings on this subject aren't recorded.)

Zilpah proves fertile and the result is that Leah was winning her race with Rachel, hopeful that somehow her success as a mother of sons will cause her husband to love her more. Leah is among the most sad and misused figures in the Old Testament. But even from her sadness emerges sons who will found the twelve tribes of Israel, helping to make God's original promise to Abraham come to pass.

6. Genesis 30:14-21 tells what happened when the two competitive sisters essentially bargained with one another to have Jacob sleep with them. Used as barter are fruits known as mandrakes, referred to here by their nickname of love apples. They were thought to be aphrodisiacs. (Why any of this crew would think they need them at this point is beyond me!)

Rachel may have felt utterly humiliated that her sister bears two more sons for Jacob. (Mentioned as an afterthought, reflective of that culture's sexism, is a daughter, Dinah. She will play a sad role in upcoming events.)

7. Another incident of narrative tension, an ongoing element in Genesis, would have arisen by now in the minds of ancient listeners to this story of Jacob. Where, they would wonder, is Joseph? Joseph, they would know, was the son of Jacob, born of Rachel, who ended up as a sort of prime minister in Egypt and would play a pivotal role in God saving His people from famine. Without Joseph, the Abrahamic promise couldn't be fulfilled. Without Joseph, there would be no Israel, no Moses, no journey to the Promised Land. For we believers in Jesus, there would be no salvation.

I'm reminded of that climactic scene in Back to the Future. Everything depends on Marty McFly's future parents kissing at the "Enchantments Under the Sea" dance. But because of Marty's presence and his disurbance of events, that seemed increasingly unlikely. Marty looked at a Polaroid snapshot of his family. His siblings had faded away and he was about to disappear, to. Then, his parents kiss. (As in Sleeping Beauty or Beauty and the Beast, it was apparently true love's first kiss.) Marty's future is secured, just in the nick of time. The audience issues sighs of relief.

Jacob and Rachel must conceive a child. And they do. His name is Joseph. God's people issue sighs of relief!

But Rachel isn't finished. She asks God for another son. That son will be Bejamin. He will be the source of joy...and sorrow.

8. The next section of the Genesis narrative was always the most difficult passage in the whole book for me to accept. I had no problem with the creation narratives. The story of the flood surfaced no difficulties. Nor did the acounts of the tower of Babel or of Sodom and Gomorrah. But my faith and credulity were challenged by this story of Jacob and the flocks of Laban.

Then I realized something. This isn't a story of Jacob's manipulation of genetics. Animals conceiving before speckled branches aren't going to produce speckled offspring. This is a story about God's intervention. In essence, Jacob said to God, "I believe that to fulfill Your promises to my ancestors and me, my family and I need to get out from under Laban's thumb. I will trust You, God, to create this animal offspring to increase my family's ability to survive whatever may come our ways when we leave Laban. This is the method I'll use." Jacob takes such a gigantic step of faith in God that when he outlines his proposal to Laban, Laban must think that one more time, he's going to take advantage of his son-in-law.

Jacob never claims that animal husbandry lay behind his success. He attributes it to God. "Over and over," he later tells Rachel and Leah, "God used your father's livestock to reward me" (Genesis 31:9).

The "negotiations" between Jacob and Laban are, in a way, typical of the marketplace transactions of the time, full of the shrewd and sometimes disingenuine wordiness favored to this day by traders in Near East cultures. Both Jacob and Laban are notorious schemers. Heretofore, Laban has always gotten the better of Jacob. Not so this time. That's because this time, God has Jacob's back. It's like I always tell my Catechism students, "Either God gets His way or God gets His way. In the end, there are no other options."

[[Here are links to the previous installments in this series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12]

Chav Hits Mother Lode, Keeps on Being Nuisance

Ever wonder what would happen if the town bully (and in the local parlance, a chav) won the Lottery? The Brit town of Swaffham is finding out.

I found it interesting that this guy was ordered not to menace people within a 400-mile radius of his home town. Does that mean he can do so beyond that radius?

This is bound to become a British made-for-TV movie.

'Christmas at Maxwell's'

I study the Biblical commentaries at a Catholic seminary library about once a week. During a short break the other day, I ran across an article in a newspaper from the Roman Catholic diocese in Cleveland. It was about this movie.

Christmas at Maxwell's is the work of a father-daughter creative team who were helped by actors from the Cleveland area. It was filmed at Lakeside, Ohio, a wonderful little community on Lake Erie, where generations of Methodists--and for retreats and continuing education events, people of other denominations--gather. The "Maxwell's" in the title is a real place.

Just getting a project like this completed is pretty amazing. It's no amateur job, either.

The premiere happens on October 27.

Call in the Pest Conrtol Professionals!

Ann Althouse, spooked by an earlier experience of having bats invade her house, is now concerned that the place has become home to squirrels. Earlier, she asked readers if they thought if this might be the case. In an update, she responded to readers telling her how to handle such an invasion, saying that if there are squirrels in the AltHouse, she will call in professionals.

I responded:

I don't know if you have squirrels in your house. But I am with you on the question of what do about them. Of course, you should call in professionals.

Earlier this year, we had a family of skunks ensconced beneath our front porch. There was no way I was going to tangle with the crew!

(In fact, a bevy of skunks have terrorized our neighborhood, particularly the local dog population, all summer long.)

The skunks are no longer a problem at our house or in our community. Part of the reason for that happy turn of events is that I "outsourced" my skunk eradication program.

My advice to you is don't try to figure out whether you've got a squirrel problem or not. Call the professionals and let them make that determination.

(No real animals were harmed in the posting of this comment.)

By the way, my competence in any of the usual homesteading skills is so limited that I require professional help for even the most mundane of tasks. So, my advice in this matter may be worthless.

I only know that the most important tool in my arsenal for dealing with household repair and maintenance needs is the telephone.