A Simply Divine Game of Hide and Seek

Posted on September 23, 2017 by salooper57

If God exists, why has no one ever proved it to the satisfaction of all? Of course, most people have not needed proof – the vast majority have always believed in a God or gods. But if God really exists, shouldn’t it be possible to prove it to people who do require proof, to agnostics and atheists? Other disputed facts – that the earth is round, for example, or that germs cause disease – have been proved and the naysayers have been silenced. Why is that so difficult to do when it comes to God?

It is important for believers to acknowledge the reality of the difficulty, rather than just shout out proofs with ever-increasing volume. It is also important for atheists to admit that their arguments have failed to carry the day, and fall short of anything like conclusive proof.

One of the reasons irrefutable proof of God’s existence (or non-existence) is elusive is that God belongs to a different class of being than those with which we are familiar. Proving God’s existence is a different thing than proving the earth is round or germs communicate disease. He is not contained in our cosmos the way earths and germs are. Asking for proof of God’s existence is like asking a character in a novel to prove the existence of the novelist. She can look and look without finding any, unaware that she herself is the proof.

There is another reason why irrefutable proof is difficult: proving to his creatures that he exists is not one of God’s priorities. Proving that he exists does not bring God closer to realizing his purpose in creation, and could even frustrate it. Would God be satisfied because a person, perhaps grudgingly, admits his existence? No, not any more than a dad would be satisfied because his philosopher-student son said, “Old man, after long study I have been forced to conclude the reality of your existence!”

Nietzsche complained that an all-knowing and all-powerful god who did not make his creatures understand, but left them to linger in doubt, could not be a good God. But Nietzsche set the stage and arranged the props to serve his own storyline. Contrary to Nietzsche, there are legitimate reasons why a good God would not force his creatures out of their doubts against their will; when doing so would harm them and undermine the good plans God has for them.

If this is true, a God who hid himself might be both good and wise, which is precisely how St. Paul thought of God’s decision to remain hidden. He wrote, “In God’s wisdom, he determined that the world wouldn’t come to know him through its wisdom.”

A serious study of Scripture will lead to the conclusion that God values human freedom and stubbornly resists the violation of people’s free will. In practice, this must be a remarkably complicated procedure because God – for lack of a better way of putting it – is so big and humans are so small, there is a constant danger he will overwhelm them. Preserving human self-determination in the presence of God is like preserving a butterfly’s flight in a hurricane. Yet God has designed the world of matter and energy so ingeniously that he is able to do it.

To maintain human free will, God makes himself avoidable. He either hides us, as he did with Moses in the cleft of the rock, or he hides himself. When God comes to humanity, it is in a modest and remarkably resistible fashion: through a still, small voice; in the form of a baby; and, when that baby grows up, through parables people can receive or ignore, as they so choose.

God does this because free will is more than an arbitrary prerequisite to human fulfillment; it is integral to the entire process, from beginning to end. Nietzsche seemed to think a good God would, in humanity’s best interests, suspend human freewill. What he didn’t realize is that, were God to do so, humans would no longer be human. Were God to make himself unavoidable, as Scripture promises he will do someday, the process of human development would end immediately.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 9/23/2017

Posted in Faith, Theology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

A Little Exercise in Talking to Oneself

Posted on September 16, 2017 by salooper57

Please share in the comment section what advise you would give to your younger self – we’d appreciate hearing it.

In his 1972 short story, The Other, Jorge Luis Borges pictures himself in Cambridge, MA, sitting on a bench overlooking the Charles River. Someone sits on the other end of the bench whom be recognizes as his younger self. They strike up a conversation in which the older Borges reveals his identity, but the younger Borges insists they are in Geneva, overlooking the Rhone. They argue about whose experience is real: has the older Borges traveled through time or is the younger Borges simply dreaming?

It is classic Borges storytelling, including the writer’s own self-effacement and his adulation of the great writers and poets who influenced him. I have not read the story in years, but when I remembered it the other day it set me thinking: if I were sent back in time and met my younger self, what would I want him to know?

I wasn’t thinking of advice like, “Buy stock in Apple,” or “Trade in the Ford Taurus now; it’s going to blow a head gasket in six months.” I was thinking more about the life principles I wish I’d known then. Here are some of the things I might tell my younger self.

“Don’t make it your business to fix people’s problems.” As a pastor, I often made other people’s problems my own. I couldn’t be happy when someone in my congregation was miserable. But some people refused to make the changes that could free them from their misery. They imprisoned themselves in a cell of their own making, for which they had a key they would not use – and trapped me inside with them.

I would also tell my younger self: “What you become is far more important than what you accomplish.” People talk about resting on one’s laurels, but no one really does that; they rest on themselves – the self they have become. This explains why some people who have accomplished impressive feats, set sports records, or made billions, are so restless. They’ve done much but have become little. The most important thing you can give anyone – including God and yourself – is the person you become.

Next, I think I would tell my younger self, “What you love will have more impact on who you become than what you know.” People like to say that knowledge is power, and of course they are right. As such, knowledge is like the engines on a plane. It’s impossible to get off the ground without it. But love is like the pilot of the plane: it determines where all that power will take us – to the place of our dreams or into the side of a mountain.

Without knowledge, we won’t make good decisions, but without love we won’t know what decisions need to be made. This explains why St. Paul prayed for his friends: “…that your love might abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best…” We always know best what we love most. This includes God.

I would also tell my younger self, “Don’t worry so much about what people think of you. The fact is, they’re probably not thinking of you, but even if they are, their opinion of you is not what matters most.” I should have known this already. I once sat at a round table in one of those horrible, touchy-feely English classes that were so common in the seventies. Each of us had to say what we thought about the person sitting to our right, and I sat to the right of the girl who was voted “Best Legs” in our school. When her turn came, “Best Legs” answered simply: “I don’t think about him.”

What I didn’t know then is that worrying about what other people think can hinder one’s ability to trust God. Jesus asked people who lived for their reputations, “How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?”

I’ll probably never meet myself sitting on a park bench in Cambridge or Geneva, but I now have an idea about what to say – just in case.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 9/16/2017

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It’s Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be

Posted on September 9, 2017 by salooper57

Orthodox Christianity has, at least from the time of Augustine, upheld the doctrine of original sin. According to the church, the first man’s rebellion against his creator left all humanity guilty before God and damaged in their nature. When Adam trespassed and fell, humanity fell with him.

  1. K. Chesterton claimed the doctrine of original sin is “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” And it does not take a long string of philosophical arguments to prove it, since anyone “can see it in the street” (or, for that matter, in politics, corporations, media, factories, schools, homes – pretty much wherever one might choose to look).

The theologian Cornelius Plantinga looked in the street (and in politics, corporations, schools and homes) and remarked it’s “Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be” (the title of his 2003 Christianity Today “Book of the Year”). The doctrine of original sin explains the dilemma of contemporary life.

The shame of past wars, the bloodshed of current wars and the threat of future wars – not the way it’s supposed to be. The arrogance of rulers, the corruption of national leaders, the danger of nuclear annihilation – not the way it is supposed to be. Corporate greed, price gouging, the disdain of the rich for the poor – not the way it is supposed to be.

In our own country, racial prejudice and class hatred is not the way it is supposed to be. The termination by abortion of nearly one out five pregnancies is not the way it’s supposed to be. Scammers using catastrophes like Hurricanes Harvey and Irma to rob both donors and victims of crucial funds – it’s not the way it’s supposed to be.

But we don’t have to look at international politics or national controversies to see things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be. We can see it in our own homes and churches. Recent findings suggest that 30 million Americans binge drink regularly. Families are being torn apart by alcohol, opioids, pornography addictions, and compulsive overspending. Divorce tears up almost one in every two American families. People are discontented with their spouses, their kids, their parents and themselves. Mental illness affects one out of four Americans, a rate far surpassing that of other nations. This is not the way it’s supposed to be.

But why? Why is it “not the way it’s supposed to be”? The church’s answer is: because of sin. According to the Bible, sin is an active force, which “seizes opportunities,” “rules,” “deceives,” and “kills.”

But sin is not a person, so how can it “do” things? Think of it this way: a computer program is not a person (though it was devised by a person), yet it can do things: it can change traffic lights from red to green, guide a precision surgical device, or launch a nuclear warhead. Likewise, sin is not a person, but it can do things – bad things.

Contemporary computing provides an analogy. In computer parlance, a “trojan horse” is a program that misrepresents itself to trick a user (victim) into installing it, since the program can’t install itself. So, programmers make the trojan horse to look good (useful, profitable, or enjoyable) to deceive the user. The hoodwinked user installs it, but it is the programmer who benefits.

This is very much like what happened in the Genesis story of humanity’s fall. Sin was misrepresented as useful, profitable, and enjoyable (the words in Genesis are “good,” “pleasing” and “desirable”) and, though Adam had been warned, he clicked the download button. Since that moment, nothing has been the way it’s supposed to be.

Humanity, which is not just individuals scattered through time and space, but one enormous, interconnected thing, stretching across space-time – a massive body with a hundred billion entangled parts – was infected. When Adam hit the download button, he didn’t merely install sin in himself but in all humanity, and sin spread through the entire network.

Because of his decision, sin is not just out there in the world but in here, in you and me. It is part of our programming, and the reason things (and people) are not the way they’re supposed to be.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 9/9/2017

Posted in Bible, Christianity, In the News, Theology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Avoid a Bandwagon Brand of Politics

Posted on September 2, 2017 by salooper57

I was recently asked, point-blank, if I was a liberal or a conservative. No one has ever asked me that question before – at least not directly. There have been times, however, when people have told me what I am: “Well, of course, you’d take that view! You’re a conservative.”

The funny thing is, I’ve heard the opposite as well: “I’m surprised to hear you say that, with your liberal views on immigration.” The same kind of thing has happened regarding my (or our church’s) theological position. Folks in mainline churches have warned people about our “fundamentalist ideology,” while real fundamentalists have suspected us of secretly harboring liberal views. What are you going to do?

When asked whether I was a political liberal or a political conservative, I found it hard to give a plain answer. It’s not that I wanted to equivocate: I know where I stand on many of the issues of the day, and I’m not at all afraid to talk about it. The difficulty was with the categories from which to choose.

On some issues, I would probably be grouped with political liberals. Immigration is one that comes to mind. I think our trifling response to the Syrian refugee crisis disgraceful. And though I believe we must secure our borders (I have no objection to the construction of a wall), I favor a liberal immigration policy. Further, even though I believe illegal aliens who are caught engaging in socially destructive and/or criminal behaviors should be promptly deported, I also favor a Reagan-style amnesty and path to citizenship for others.

On other issues – the size and role of government, for instance, abortion, gay marriage, constitutional law, and many more – I would probably be classified as a conservative. But the real problem I had in answering my friend’s straightforward question is that I don’t identify with either conservatives or liberals.

Asking me whether I am a conservative or a liberal is like asking a basketball player whether he plays offense or defense. Yes, I know there is a game called football in which almost all the players are on one side of the line or the other, offense of defense, but not both. I’m even interested in football. I have opinions about which teams are best. But I play basketball, not football, so the question of whether I’m on offense or defense can only be answered, “Yes.”

So with politics. I have opinions, and I am not ambivalent about them. I sometimes write my congressman and my state legislators to express them, or send a letter to the editor. But politics (at least in the modern sense of the word) is not my game. I have another, older and more fundamental commitment: an allegiance to the kingdom of God.

My political “hermeneutic” – the key by which I interpret current events and form opinions about the best actions to take – has nothing to do with what is liberal or what is conservative. Indeed, I consider such a hermeneutic to be dangerously misleading for a Christian. Nor does budget, race or gender serve as my political hermeneutic, as they often do for people these days. I take the positions I do because, to my mind, they most adequately represent God’s values and serve his purpose for the world.

I wrote, “to my mind,” just now because I realize that other people who operate from the same hermeneutic may come to different conclusions. Rather than condemning those conclusions out of hand as too liberal or too conservative, I want to examine them in the light of my biblical worldview. Perhaps they will challenge my conclusions (or, as is more likely, my assumptions) in ways that will hone and refine my commitment to God’s kingdom.

Should Christians renounce political involvement because neither party adequately represents them? Certainly not. Would that both parties were filled with Christians! The more of us involved in local and national politics the better, with this one caveat: our political involvement must not compete with our kingdom of God commitment, but grow out of it. A thoughtless, bandwagon brand of politics will neither help the nation nor serve God’s kingdom.

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Our Church Is Better Than Your Church

Posted on August 26, 2017 by salooper57

I’ve been surprised by people who, in conversation with me, refer to the church I pastor as “your church.” I’m surprised because they’ve been attending for years. Why are they still saying “you” instead of “we” and “your church” instead of “our church”? It’s not as if they are upset about something. They usually say it favorably and in the context of a complement:

“Your church does such a great job with funerals!”

“Your church is so caring toward people in need.”

“Your church is really friendly and accepting.”

All the while, I’m thinking: “What do you mean – it’s your church too, isn’t it?”

That got me wondering: what components (attitudes, behaviors, relationships, etc.) characterize people who think of the church they attend as “our church” and differentiate them from people who attend the same church but think of it as “your church”?

This is a critical issue from a pastoral perspective, because a healthy spirituality will always include an “our church” mentality. More than that, from a theological perspective, the church does not simply belong to a person; the person belongs to the church. It is with this understanding that St. Paul writes, “…so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” (How contrary to the American individualist mindset!)

So, what traits distinguish people who say, “Our church,” from those who say, “Your church”? A number of characteristics come to mind and, while these are based on soft data (conversations, observations, and pastoral experience) rather than hard data (surveys, giving receipts, and attendance figures), I strongly suspect the hard data would support these conclusions.

First, “our church” people have established meaningful relationships within the church. They have a circle. They see each other outside of church and talk on other days than Sundays. “Your church” people, on the other hand, are often either alone or are part of a closed circuit – a family or an exclusive friendship.

“Our church” people consider the church to be very important. They don’t need to think about where they’ll be when the church gathers—they’ll be right there with them. For them, the Christian life is unthinkable without the church. They may or may not be able to articulate a biblical or theological understanding of the church, but they know it is not optional.

“Your church” people, on the other hand, believe that Christianity is a “God and me” thing. It’s good to “go to church,” if you have the time and if you like the people, but of course it is not necessary. “Your church” people tend to speak deprecatingly of “organized religion” and see life after death as the primary (and perhaps even the only) reason for faith.

This leads into the next characteristic that distinguishes “our church” people from “your church” people: “Our church” people think of their Christian faith as a way of life while “you church” people think of it as a religion. “Our church” people are serious about the implications their faith commitment has for their home life and work life, their relationships and their leisure. “Your church” people tend to think about church the way some people with coronary artery disease think about their cholesterol-lowering medication: take it and forget about it, and then you can do whatever you want.

I have also noticed that “our church” people tend to think differently than “your church” people about needs. The “our church” people feel a responsibility to meet the church’s needs. “Your church” people believe the church is responsible to meet their needs. This means that “our church” people are invested in the church, in time, thought, and money and, as Jesus taught us, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” “Your church” people are much less likely to give time or money, or especially thought to the church. They don’t treasure it.

“Your church” folks never derive the kind of benefit their “our church” counterparts receive, and they don’t even know it. They may even think they need to go to another church when really, they only need to make the church they attend their own.

I’d love to hear from you. Can you think of any additional characteristics that might distinguish “Our Church” people from their “Your Church” counterparts!

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 8/26/2017

Posted in Christianity, Church, Spiritual life | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Charlottesville: Is it Time to Take Sides?

Posted on August 19, 2017 by salooper57

 

After Charlottesville, is it time to take sides? President Trump has been roundly criticized for his alleged refusal to do so, both in his initial response to the violence there and in his follow-up news conference. He has been reproached for implying that there is a moral equivalency between the parties involved, and challenged to formally renounce the KKK and other white nationalists.

Many Republicans have joined their colleagues across the aisle in choosing a side – sort of. They’ve come out against neo-Nazism, white supremacy and hate groups. But that’s like taking a stand against beating children and robbing little old ladies – who would disagree?

So, politicians are rushing to take a side – and it happens to be the one on which almost every voter in their district stands. Not a lot of courage there. President Trump is trying (or is being represented as trying) to avoid taking a side. Perhaps there is more courage there, but a startling lack of moral cognizance. Meanwhile, our nation is being torn apart, and not between Antifa and Neo-Nazis movements, but between whites and people of color, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans.

So, after Charlottesville, is it time to take a side? After Michael Brown in Ferguson, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Eric Garner in New York, is it time to take a side? After the brutal killing of praying Christians at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, is it time to take a side? Yes, it’s time to take a side: the side of justice over injustice, love over hate, peace over violence, listening over shouting, humility over pride, and self-sacrifice over self-promotion.

But which side is more likely to provide all these things – the Antifa or the white supremacists? The Right or the Left? The Republicans or the Democrats? If this were a multiple-choice test, everyone would be skipping through A, B, and C in a rush to circle D: “None of the above.” These groups have been ratcheting up the hatred, not reducing it. They have benefited from divisiveness – why would they want to end it?

It’s not that I don’t believe in choosing a side – I do. As a student of the Scriptures, I know that Christianity is a side-taking religion. The claim against Christians has always been that they are side-takers; they are exclusive. They have the chutzpah to claim that they are right.

That claim is not quite accurate. Christians don’t claim they are right, but that Jesus is, and they take his side. They will work with anyone who genuinely desires love, justice and peace, but they won’t take their side. They’ve already taken one, and proclaimed it in their baptism. They’ve taken sides with Jesus Christ.

But isn’t taking sides what’s wrong with the world? Doesn’t taking sides make a person combative and malicious towards people on the other side? Isn’t this the whole problem with militant Islam – they’ve taken sides? Wouldn’t we be better off with a more “spherical” religion – one in which there are no sides, where no one is wrong, and all paths lead to God?

I think not. Better to take a stand and choose a side with Jesus Christ and the non-ethnic people of God. But do not mistake this with choosing a side in the culture wars, which is not at all the same thing. We don’t take a side by baptizing the latest liberal cause and giving it a Christian name, nor by proclaiming the gospel of traditional values. We take a side by being faithful to the God of Jesus, no matter what.

Right now, everyone is in a hurry to renounce white supremacy. Good – it’s repulsive. But who is in a hurry to love their enemies, even those white supremacists? Only those who’ve taken sides with Jesus. Who prays for those who misuse them? The Christians do. Who makes “every effort to do what leads to peace”? The people who call Jesus “Lord.”

I take my side with those people – all of them, whatever their ethnicity, whatever the cost. I take my side with them, and with the one we together call “Lord.”

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 8/17/2017

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What the World Needs Now

Posted on August 12, 2017 by salooper57

What does the world need now? Answers to that question are everywhere. One can’t amble through the morning paper or the evening news – or even the grocery store – without tripping over them. Some answers are religious and some secular, some hackneyed and familiar while others are new and novel. Some answers are hard and techy (a globally reliable communication network), while others are soft and feel-good (what the world needs now is love, sweet love).

The church certainly has offered its share of answers to the question, though often in confusing and even contradictory ways. Depending on the voice you’re listening to, the answer might be: the world needs justice or equality (gender, racial, and economic), or the world needs to return to (or discover for the first time) Christian morality.

The church has frequently tried to give the world an answer that both proves God’s existence and justifies the church’s. But these apologetic-type answers are ineffective for at least two reasons. First, they have kept the church in a defensive posture for generations; and second (and more importantly), they have reduced God’s big answer to mere words. When he gave the world his Son and his church, he said, “Here’s my answer.”

The church needs to remember that. She is not a social service agency nor a foundation for the preservation of traditional morals, but the Body of Christ. As such, the church doesn’t have the answer; the church is the answer – the only answer that can make a difference.

For several generations, the liberal wing of the church has tried to answer the question, “What does the world need now?” from a revised catalog of secular solutions. The world needs to end economic disparity and racial bias, while promoting universal health care and non-violence. The world needs gender equality, or perhaps gender blindness, or (even more radically) to put an end to gender distinction altogether.

Where does God fit into these answers? He usually arrives as a sanctified afterthought, as Christians posit a relationship between today’s preferred answers and their overlooked deity: “Of course, with God there is no male or female, but all are one in Christ.” This God is not necessarily the God of Jesus, whose actions and ways are revealed in the Bible. This is a more generic divinity who, happily, follows the same agenda as social and political progressives. How convenient!

One can sympathize with the liberal wing of the church. They understandably long to regain the radicalism that characterized Jesus. His contemporaries considered him scandalous. Ours considered us boring. How can we recover the scandal of the gospel? The liberal church has tried to do it, according to Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon in their excellent book Resident Aliens, “by identifying the church with the newest secular solutions.”

Does the conservative wing of the church fare any better? Not much. Though they have the advantage of a high view of Scripture, they’ve made little use of it. Finding themselves on the same path as their liberal brothers and sisters, they’ve trudged off in the opposite direction, where they hope to find shelter from the storms of the age in the traditions of the past.

The trouble with the twenty-first century American church is not that its path is too liberal or too conservative, but that it is the wrong path. It has followed politics when it should have been following Jesus. If it had, liberals would have had the scandal they thought they wanted, and conservatives would have preserved the values their children have lost.

Is there hope? Of course there’s hope: there is a God. The church belongs to him, not to liberals or conservatives. The good shepherd will lead his church through the moral wilderness of the twenty-first century and not even one of his own will be lost. But while the critics and commentators are shouting answers from the rooftops of media strongholds, we must learn again to listen for the good shepherd’s voice. He not only has the answer, he is the answer.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 8/12/2017

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Just Give it a Rest, America

Posted on August 5, 2017 by salooper57

Americans are some of the most restless and least rested people in the world. They work more hours a week and more weeks a year than their European counterparts. The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 35 percent of Americans get less than the minimum hours of sleep required to reduce the risk of serious illness like diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke. Just give it a rest, America.

In an interview with John Pattison, Columbia Theological Seminary Professor Walter Bruggemann, claims Americans “are caught up in a culture of restlessness, a market ideology in which the goal of life is to produce more and consume more … The market ideology is a rat-race that has infected us all.”

It could be reasonably argued that this state of affairs is nothing new; that it is, rather, intrinsic to our cultural identity. Professor James Jasper has written that the Puritan communities in 17th century America were “dashed by transiency.” According to Jasper, “In late-seventeenth-century Virginia, fewer than half of those appearing on county tax lists in one decade were living in the same county ten years later.” Those early Americans just couldn’t give it a rest.

Things haven’t changed much either. According to Jasper, at the end of a typical five-year period, nearly half the U.S. population (47 percent) is living in different place. When compared to other societies – the Dutch, 4 percent; the Germans, 4 percent; the English 8 percent, and the French and Japanese 10 percent – it is clear that Americans are still “dashed by transience.”

Even when Americans aren’t on the job or on the go, they would rather be distracted than rested. According to a recent Nielsen company study, the average American spends nearly 11 hours a day on their smartphones, tablets, TVs, or computers. According to a study by dscout Enterprise, the average cell phone user touches his or her phone over 2,000 times a day.

What we need is rest and relaxation. What we get is visual stimulation from almost 11 hours of screen use a day and a compulsive need to touch our phones. People who are not sufficiently rested have lower impulse control, often feel “foggy” and irritable, and miss work more often. They struggle with maintaining a healthy weight. They have trouble remembering things. Rest will help with these symptoms, but distractions – smart phone apps, video games and television – will not. No one gets up from watching four hours of television and says, “I feel rested.”

Restlessness is not merely a sociological issue. It is a theological one. Augustine was right when he acknowledged to God: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

R. Paul Stevens claims that “our rest patterns express our real beliefs about God. Restless people have not found peace with God or with themselves. Restless societies are out of sync with God’s purposes.”

An inability to rest sometimes betrays a lack of confidence in God. We may profess faith, but our hurried and harried lives proclaim a deep mistrust in God’s care. Overwork and lack of sleep suggest a person is trusting himself or herself to make things come out right, rather than God. It is precisely these people the biblical songwriter challenges when he writes, “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for he grants sleep to those he loves.” Commenting on this verse, Stevens writes, “The gospel of Jesus literally puts people to sleep,” since it replaces angst-ridden toil with quiet confidence in God.

Jesus promised his students rest, if they would learn from him. That promise has never been more relevant than it is now, in twenty-first century American life: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

This rest only comes from learning a different kind of life, one that Jesus – more than anyone else – knows how to teach.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 8/5/2017

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A Burden Too Big for People to Bear

Posted on July 29, 2017 by salooper57

How should a man respond to a beautiful woman who looks deep into his eyes and says (in the words of R&B songwriter Jazmine Sullivan), “You’re my best friend, my lover – Baby, you’re my everything. You’re everything to me: The air that I breathe; my sight, so I see, oh, you’re everything to me. I need you, I need you, I need you…”

Or how should a woman respond to a handsome and intelligent man who speaks to her these lines from Neil Sedaka: “I don’t know how I ever lived before. You are my life, my destiny. Oh, my darling, I love you so. You mean everything to me.”

If someone said words like these to you, how would you respond? Would you melt on the spot? Would you swell with pride? If you were smart, you would run away. No one is big enough to bear the burden of being everything to someone else – no one except God.

What does it even mean to “be everything” to another person? Not, I presume, that one is a rock, a bear, oxygen, the planet Mars, sleep and sunshine to that person. The language of the idiom is imprecise, but the thought seems to be, “You are a substitute to me for everything else. I don’t need other things, as long as I have you.”

Of course, that is nonsense. If a person substitutes a lover for food or air, he or she won’t be around long enough to find satisfaction in the lover. Then perhaps, “You’re everything to me,” is just a shorthand way of saying that my happiness depends on you. Again, what a terrible burden to place on another person.

And yet people do it all the time. A parent says of his or her infant son, “He’s everything to me.” Pity that son: he’s going to spend a fortune on psychiatric treatment someday. A man or woman says of a spouse, “You mean everything to me.” That’s not a marriage any sane person would want to be in. A fan says of a celebrity, “He’s my life; he’s everything to me.” Disillusionment is waiting around the corner.

It is not only unwise to make another human your everything, it is unfair. As a pastor, I have seen husbands and wives do something very like this. They have placed their happiness and fulfillment on their spouse’s shoulders and said, in effect, “Only you can make me happy. It’s all up to you. I’m depending on you.” Of course, there is a flipside: any unhappiness I experience will be your fault.

But it’s not always another person on whom such responsibility is thrust. Sometimes people’s everything is a hobby, a sports team, or a lifelong pursuit. A person might say, “I live and breathe Detroit Lions football. It’s everything to me.” That will be one (perennially) depressed person.

Other people say, “Music is my life. Music means everythin25-26g to me.” Such people will someday stand on the edge of their embattled illusions (as the songwriter Jackson Browne put it), and realize they made a big mistake. Music can enrich them, but it will never fulfill them.

The biblical songwriter said something like “You’re everything to me,” but he said it to God, the only person who is big enough to handle it. In Psalm 73, the poet writes, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

When a person decides another human will be his or her everything, other things lose meaning. But a curious thing happens when a person decides that God will be his or her everything: other things gain meaning. Other things – rocks, bears, oxygen, the planet Mars, sleep and sunshine – become reminders of God, gifts of his grace, and expressions of his wisdom and beauty.

This is, perhaps, the kind of thing C. S. Lewis had in mind when he wrote, “…look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” When God is a person’s everything, other things are not thrown out but “thrown in.”

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 7/29/2017

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Hard Hearts, Closed Minds, and Blind Eyes

Posted on July 22, 2017 by salooper57

If a pastor wants to start a row, he needn’t preach heresy. All he needs to do is change the color of the carpet in the church nursery or bring a drum set onto the platform. People might not notice the heresy, but everyone will notice the carpet and the drum set.

Churches are famous for their “we-never-did-it-that-way-before” mindset, though, in fact, churches are no more prone to such thinking than the Kiwanis, the Chamber of Commerce or the United States Senate. It is a human condition.

And that is why organizations have such a hard time with change. People can do the same thing a thousand times, as long they know that what the result will be, and it is moderately good (or, at least, not bad). But investing time and resources in uncertainty is disconcerting – even painful.

When Jesus burst onto the scene in the Palestinian region of Galilee in the mid to late-twenties, there were a lot of people saying things like, “We never did it that way before.” In a world where tradition was not only ingrained but celebrated, Jesus’s new way of doing things (based on new ways of seeing things), made people uncomfortable, defensive and increasingly combative.

In first century Judaism, religious people refused to eat (or have “table fellowship,” as it is often called) with the irreligious. When Jesus flouted that custom, religious people didn’t know what to make of him. His explanation (that sinners need help too) didn’t satisfy them.

In many first century religious communities, fasting was a weekly practice. It was a sign of one’s deep seriousness about spirituality and reverence for God. Jesus was reproached because his disciples, unlike those in other religious communities, did not fast. Though Jesus explained the reason to his critics, they simply couldn’t comprehend it.

St. Mark tells these stories in a section of his Gospel devoted to conflict narratives. The most serious involve misunderstandings regarding the Sabbath Day, which Jews had been commanded to “keep holy.” Many of Jesus’s contemporaries believed the long string of disasters that had befallen their country were divine punishment for their failure to keep the Sabbath holy, and had devised elaborate plans to so do. Over 600 Sabbath Day regulations had been legislated since the end of the Old Testament era.

Jesus ignored many of those regulations, and insisted that the Sabbath was meant to serve people, not people the Sabbath. After a string of conflicts, some of which had to do with proper Sabbath conduct, Jesus found himself in a synagogue on the Sabbath in the company of increasingly adversarial religious leaders and a man whose hand was deformed.

St. Mark tells the story: “Jesus said to the man with the deformed hand, ‘Come and stand in front of everyone.’ Then he turned to his critics and asked, “Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?” But they wouldn’t answer him.

 

“He looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts. Then he said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” So the man held out his hand, and it was restored! At once the Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how to kill Jesus.”

The Evangelist makes a point of telling readers that Jesus’s critics had hard hearts and that Jesus was deeply saddened by their condition. He knew hard hearts lead to closed minds and blind eyes. It is a condition we are all too familiar with in our day.

Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, liberals and fundamentalists all accuse one another of refusing to think. But it’s not so much that they refuse to consider the other side’s views as they are incapable of doing so: their hard hearts have left their minds closed and their eyes blind.

It is fear and sin (with its myriad expressions of selfishness and deceit) that harden hearts, and hardened hearts will generally not soften until they break. Perhaps this is the reason God “will not despise” a “broken and contrite heart”: it offers the promise, or at least the possibility, of an open mind, seeing eyes, and a sympathetic soul.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 7/22/2017

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