The well-tempered person

Posted on January 23, 2016 by salooper57

Controlling anger is a big issue for many people. “I’ll admit it,” they say. “I have a real temper.” But they’re mistaken. The problem is they have not been tempered enough.

“Tempering” is a process that increases strength and elasticity. The word is usually used in reference to glass or steel, but can describe an analogous process in people. A well-tempered person does not break under pressure; does not give up in despair or lash out in anger.

One of a parent’s main child-rearing duties is to temper the child: to train the child to keep on trying when things are tough and to remain calm when emotions are strained. Not surprisingly, this training tests the temper of the parent, and parents who have not been properly tempered themselves may give up in despair or lash out in anger.

A failure in tempering can continue for generations. It shows up in individuals and families who cannot face difficulties without caving in or adversaries without blowing up. The results – a long line of broken marriages, neglected children and failed careers – are a sad testament to the importance of tempering.

Anger is one result of a failure to temper oneself and one’s children. It is self-perpetuating. Anger begets anger, not just in the heat of a moment between adversaries, but from generation to generation within families. People who struggle with anger frequently have parents who had the same issues.

The Apostle Paul described anger memorably as the devil’s foothold. Knowing the dangers it presents, he warned, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger…”

In commenting on this text, preachers often point out that anger is not, in itself, a sin, and they’re right. Anger isn’t necessarily a sin, just as fire isn’t necessarily destructive. But just as one shouldn’t go around lighting fires in the house, one shouldn’t go around pouring out anger on the family. Anger is a fire, and some people carry a veritable flame-thrower around their homes, torching relationships and wreaking destruction.

Anger keeps bad company with filthy language (both profanity and hurtful, damaging words), malice, gossip and strife. Anger has ravaged families all over the world, including those that consider themselves religious, and left them with constant strife, ugly words, and an alarming readiness to inflict pain.

When we are initially made to face our anger, our first step is usually not to abandon it but to justify it. “I have good reasons for being angry,” we say, and will explain them to anyone who will listen. But who cares to listen? Everyone has their own reasons for being angry. What we need is a reason to stop being angry.

The Bible offers many such reasons: For one, anger does not bring about the righteous life God desires or, for that matter, the happy life we desire. In fact it militates against it. Anger damages the soul. It leads to evil. It hurts others. It causes a person to act in ways he or she will later regret. And it leaves the angry person subject to judgment – both human and divine.

But if a person was not effectively tempered as a child, and struggles with despair and/or anger now, is there anything that can be done? Yes. First, get serious. People don’t overcome anger issues by accident. Unless you intend to be different, you will not be different. Take responsibility for your anger, resolutely choose not to act out of it, and tell others of your choice.

Then, get spiritual: turn to God and ask for help. Talk about your anger with a pastor. Pray daily, even hourly, for grace to overcome it. Practice appropriate spiritual disciplines.

Finally, get practical. Get advice from people who’ve been through it. Ask a friend to hold you accountable. Read up on the subject. See a counselor. And when you fail (and you will), start over. Tempering is a process, so give yourself time. Just don’t give excuses.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/23/2015

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Does God live in our zip code?

Posted on January 16, 2016 by salooper57

In her book, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, the philosopher Catharine Wilson has asserted that “we are all, in a sense, Epicureans now.” The biblical scholar N. T. Wright quotes Wilson, and calls her assessment “spot on.”

When I was a young man, I thought Epicureans were people who ate foods with names I couldn’t pronounce at restaurants I couldn’t afford. And indeed, Webster’s “simple” definition of Epicurean is “Involving an appreciation of fine food and drink.” But we are clearly not all Epicureans in that sense. So what does Wilson mean?

She means that the worldview of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus has won the day. Epicurus, who lived three centuries before Christ, taught that God (or the gods) are irrelevant to our lives. Everything we see and are is but a chance and temporary configuration of atoms that is destined to dissolve and be reconfigured.

Epicurus, as popularized by his first century B.C.E. disciple Lucretius, saw no need for a God or gods to create the cosmos. If there is a God, he does not care about humanity, does not answer prayers and offers no judgment on individuals. The best humans can do is avoid as much pain and enjoy as much pleasure as possible, for as long as possible.
God, if he exists (and Epicurus does seem to believe in some kind of detached deity or deities) does not live in our zip code. He may live (to borrow an analogy from Wright) on an upper story of our building, but the stairs have collapsed and the elevator is out of order. God, in Lucretius’s Epicureanism, does not care about us, and we do not need him.

This is the view that, according to Catherine Wilson, dominates our day. It is taken for granted on college campuses, both in the sciences and in the humanities. It is the orthodox view of modern secularism, and provides the philosophical foundation for atheism, old and new.

Many people believe that science has produced this modern and enlightened view of things, but one could argue that the truth lies in exactly the opposite direction. It was an ancient and unscientific (in the modern sense) philosophy that produced modern scientists, who conduct their inquiries having already concluded that God is not involved. That is a philosophical assumption, not a scientific deduction.

It is important to realize that Epicureanism has never been the only philosophical game in town, though its contemporary dominance, as Wilson asserted, is clear. In the ancient world, Epicureans shared the stage with Stoics, Sophists, Platonists and others.

Indeed, in the first century, the Apostle Paul squared off against Stoic and Epicurean philosophers at Athens. His view, founded on Jewish monotheism, made claims that flatly contradicted those of Epicureanism: The God who created and sustains the world has entered the world to redeem it through Jesus Christ. His resurrection is proof that God has come among us.

The Epicureans debated St. Paul, though it is not at all clear that they understood him. They eventually resorted to name-calling, as some contemporary Epicureans have also been known to do. And that is, is some ways, the point post-modern Americans need to keep in mind: today’s cultural debates are nothing new. They are not the result of science versus obscurantism or reason verses religion, or modern enlightenment verses ancient naiveté, as is so often portrayed. They are the result of competing philosophical approaches to life.

Because that is true, it is not enough, not nearly enough, to ask if modern science is right, since modern science is conducted and interpreted through a philosophical worldview. We need to go further and ask which worldview best depicts reality. One can utterly reject Epicurean philosophy and still value science and hold it in high regard. But one cannot accept Christianity, with its central belief in a creator and redeemer, without utterly rejecting Epicureanism.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/16/2015

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Don’t Be Bored in the New Year

Posted on January 2, 2016 by salooper57

Our church was selling its old pews a few years ago. One wag suggested we advertise them with the tag line, “You’ve slept in them at church. Now you can try them at home.” His fellow wit added, “And we can throw in one of Shayne’s CDs to sweeten the deal.”

Of course one of the most common complaints people have about church is that it is boring. It may be a mistake, however, to conclude that people are bored because church services are uninteresting. The opposite, could in fact, be true: that services are uninteresting because church people are bored. As Chesterton said, “There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”

Americans fear boredom. (There’s even a word for that: thaasophobia.) David McCullough tells the story of the American writer Barnaby Conrad who, in 1958, was badly gored in a bullfight in Spain. Shortly thereafter the actress Eva Gabor was having lunch with Noel Coward in a New York restaurant, and the two were overheard talking about the incident.

“Noel, dahling,” said Eva. “Have you heard the news about poor Bahnaby? He vas terribly gored in Spain.”

“He was what?” asked Coward in alarm.

“He vas gored!”

“Thank heavens. I thought you said he was bored.”

Boredom isn’t all bad. It can force people into creativity, but more often it makes people easy prey for distractions and temptations. A church service can never be an antidote for a boring life, but a life of purpose and adventure can be an antidote for boring church services.

The word “boredom” was not part of common English usage until the 18th century, and didn’t make its way into the Oxford English Dictionary until midway through the 19th. Curiously, it was when labor-saving devices and attention-grabbing distractions were becoming more readily available, that people began talking about being bored. And now, in the age of constant connection and instant gratification, boredom has reached epidemic levels.

Boredom is difficult to avoid when one’s purpose in life is comfort, prosperity, or security. Caught in the stale life of self-promotion and self-protection, people look for relief in exotic vacations, wilderness treks, action movies, pornography, and gambling. But relief is often costly and always short-lived.

The long-term solution to boredom is not to go looking for distraction but to commit to a purpose. The philosopher Peter Kreeft pointed out that “The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life―until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty.” Francis escaped boredom when he found a purpose.

In Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow has his main character describe boredom as “a kind of pain caused by unused powers, the pain of wasted possibilities or talents…” Boredom does not so much result from a lack of worthwhile things to do, but from a waste of God-given abilities.

Those God-given abilities are often wasted by people who do not know they live in a purposeful world occupied by a purposeful God. Even people who believe in such a God are sometimes bored, their boredom resulting (in part) from an indistinct or distorted view of God’s involvement in the world and in their lives.

From what we can tell, Jesus was never bored. Neither were his apostles. Neither were the saints. These were people who lived in a God-bathed world, with a God-given purpose for which they employed their God-given abilities. And they taught others to do the same.

Jesus told people, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Full of joy, yes. and sometimes trouble; work, weariness, and sometimes tears; but never full of boredom.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/2/2016

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The hard-to-believe truth about Christmas

Posted on December 19, 2015 by salooper57

In a famous Old Testament passage, the prophet Isaiah wrote: “The Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). St. Matthew tells us that the conception and birth of Jesus fulfilled that prophecy. He has no doubt that Jesus is the Immanuel whose coming Isaiah foretold.

Immanuel is a Hebrew name meaning, “God with us.” Jesus was a sign to the world that God is with us. The biblical writers boldly claimed that in Jesus, God came to us by becoming one of us. He is the “with us God.” He is Immanuel.

He did not come simply to be for us, as wonderful as that might be. He came to be with us. It is almost beyond belief that God – the eternal, all-knowing, everywhere-present, always joyful, omnipotent deity – wants to be with ordinary people like us.

It is much easier to believe that he wants to be for us than it is to believe that he wants to be with us. We can accept the fact that he came to do something for us – atone for our sin, heal our diseases, give us eternal life – so long as we can picture him returning to the glory of heaven’s mansions when he’s done. But it’s hard to believe that he would choose – that he actually desires – to be with us from now on.

We’ve all seen news footage of some movie star who flies to the slums of Calcutta or some other poverty-ravaged place, writes a check for malaria drugs, and tenderly holds an emaciated child in her arms. But we know that when the photo op is over, she’ll fly back to her Hollywood mansion. We really can’t imagine the film star moving into the crowded and dirty slums, living with its people and loving them, sharing their few joys and many sorrows.

But Christmas announces God’s intention to share our lives, and to share his life with us. He apparently wants to be part of what we’re doing. He wants to share PTO meetings, and days at the shop or office. He wants to meet our friends and love our families. He wants to go to church with us, rather than just meet us there. And he wants to go back home with us when we leave.

He wants to be there on that magical day when the doctor walks into the office and announces, “You’re going to have twins!” And he wants to be with us years later, when the doctor sits down next to us and says, “I’m sorry. It’s cancer. There’s nothing we can do.”

Most of us have heard that God requires our time, money and obedience, but we’ve somehow missed the reason behind the requirement: he wants to share our lives. Perhaps the biggest problem I’ve seen church people make over the years is that they try to live the Christian life without Christ. They try for a year or two (and maybe longer) to live a for-God life instead of trusting Jesus to bring them into a with-God life.

When people try to live for God without living with God, life becomes a drudgery. It leads to hypocrisy, envy and a bevy of other sins. But God will not force himself on us. He waits for us to invite him. He waits for us to ask him to the PTO meeting. He’s ready at the drop of a pin to go with us to work. He’d positively love for us to take him to church.

Jesus didn’t come into the world so that we could live a successful and solitary Christian life. He came so that God could be with us in a shared life. If we don’t understand that, we don’t understand Christmas.

Most of us start off wanting God to do things for us. Some of us, through God’s grace and the experience of gratitude, progress to the place where we want to do something for God. That is better, but it is not best. Best is to come to the place where we want to do something – in fact, to do everything – with God. This is the abundant life Jesus said he came to give us. This is what it means to believe in Immanuel.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 12/19/2015

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Restoring our center of gravity

Posted on December 12, 2015 by salooper57

Driving around Chicago felt like a cinch after the crazy drivers and screaming racing bikes on the 405 in L.A. It felt like a cinch, that is, until the SUV immediately in front of us swerved one way, then the other, and then rolled over more times than we could count.

Had I performed the same maneuver in our sedan, our car would have kept its wheels. That’s because we have a much lower center of gravity. The SUV’s high center of gravity caused the weight load on the side wheels to shift dramatically, hence the crash.

The term “center of gravity” refers to the point at which the entire weight of a body can be equally balanced. In racing, the center of gravity is enormously important. Two cars with equal power will perform very differently, depending on the location of the center of gravity. The same principle is consequential for mechanical engineering, athletics, dance and a whole host of disciplines.

Imagine a car that has been involved in a collision. It is still drivable, but the center of gravity has been moved from a spot under the firewall and midway between the doors to a place directly under the passenger seat. Now when the car turns left, weight is unevenly distributed to the right side. Because the center of gravity has been moved back, acceleration is sluggish. Mileage stinks. Braking is slow. The car has lost its center. It is an accident waiting to happen.

This could be a helpful metaphor for understanding the human race, which always seems to be an accident waiting to happen. Thinkers in the Judeo-Christian tradition believe that humanity has been in a kind of collision. They refer to it as “the fall,” and believe that it has effectively moved our center of gravity. Humanity has lost its center.

This explains our sluggishness to respond to injustice. It explains why, when tempted to unethical or immoral behavior, we can’t seem to stop ourselves. By the time we know it’s wrong, it’s too late to stop. It explains why we experience emotional roll-overs.

God was our gravitational center – our pivot point. The collision (the fall) has moved that point away from God and to the passenger side, where self-interest is located. Our lives are still drivable, but they handle so poorly that we can’t keep out of accidents: divorce, abuse, negligence, racism, unjust treatment of the poor, war, and the misuse of the earth, to name a few.

It takes major repair work to get the center of gravity back where it belongs. Politics cannot do it. Neither can education or social activism. Neither can medical or psychological treatment. These things are all good and helpful – even necessary – but they cannot, in and of themselves, provide a solution. That takes a power from outside ourselves. The car that has been in a collision cannot fix itself. Neither can a person.

Only God has the know-how to fully restore a person damaged by “the fall.” He understands the intricacies of mind and soul, the interrelationships between them and between them and others. As the original designer, he knows how people are supposed to function. And as an experienced restorer, he knows what it takes to renovate damaged people.

It is conversion, renewal, and restoration that is needed. Conversion is a theological term for the change that takes place in a person when he or she trusts God and submits to his leadership over life. Conversion begins with an act of faith, but it doesn’t end there. It ends when one’s center of gravity has been restored to its rightful place, and that requires ongoing work.

Worship has a role in that ongoing work. Worship changes us precisely because it brings us back to our true center. In worship we both act and are acted upon; we give and receive. The push and pull of worship repositions us, brings us into alignment with God, and works to restore us to our true center. Worship obliges us to “Acknowledge that the LORD is God! He made us and we belong to him; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” To sincerely make that acknowledgment is to move toward our true center and our eventual restoration.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 12/12/2015

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Why did people hate Jesus?

Posted on December 5, 2015 by salooper57

People tend to forget that the Jesus of the Christmas story eventually grew up, was sadistically tortured and put to death. During the holidays we can’t help but think of him as “the little Lord Jesus,” who “laid down his sweet head” in a manger. It’s hard to understand why people would come to hate and insult him, conspire against him, and hound him to his grave.

But it’s not just the baby Jesus. It’s also the man Jesus who, according to the Bible, “went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.” Why on earth would anyone want to kill a person who went around doing good?

There is a disconnect in many people’s minds between the life Jesus lived and the death he died. The story feels a little like a poorly written movie which, when over, leaves the thoughtful viewer dissatisfied. Why did the lead character die? Why did people hate him so much, when he was so kind? It doesn’t make sense.

The summary statements in the creeds – “born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried” – aren’t much help. They don’t even try to tell us why. Preachers frequently explain Jesus’s death in exclusively theological terms: He died a sacrificial death by the will of God. Yes, he did, and the theological purposes behind his death were clearly of the utmost importance. But those purposes were achieved through the machinations of real people who had strong personal motives for wanting Jesus out of the way.

People in authority viewed Jesus as a threat. This started early, when King Herod (who also executed two of his sons because he suspected them of plotting a coup) heard about the birth of a child in the royal line and dispatched soldiers to kill him. As odd as it seems, the old tyrant on his throne saw the sweet baby in a manger as a real and imminent threat.

According to the New Testament, Jesus’s life was threatened numerous times, most often by the religious leaders known as Pharisees. They regarded Jesus as a challenge to their authority in the synagogue. His unstinting criticisms of their hypocrisy and greed stung them badly, and threatened their credibility. As the old Baptist preacher Vance Havner used to say, “Jesus was not crucified for saying ‘Behold the lilies of the field, how they toil not, neither do they spin,’ but for saying, ‘Behold the Pharisees, how they steal.’

But the Pharisees were not alone in their fear and hatred of Jesus. With them stood the Herodians, who hoped to regain the Emperor’s approval and return to power. Israel had always been a cauldron that brewed revolution, and the Herodians suspected Jesus of stirring the pot. They knew that Rome wouldn’t like that, and their hopes depended on Rome’s pleasure.

Then there was Israel’s aristocracy, the Sadducees. They exercised leadership over the high council (the Sanhedrin) and oversaw the country’s religious life. They did this from a place of privilege and wealth that most of Israel’s citizens could only imagine.
But that place of privilege and wealth was tenuous. They could only hold onto it by pleasing the occupational government and serving its interests. When they failed at that (fell short of revenue quotas or failed to suppress uprisings), their leaders were routinely deposed.

When Jesus stormed the temple (a story told in all four gospels) and maintained control of it for an entire day, the Sadducees panicked. Such an act was prelude to an uprising, and an uprising was prelude to a Roman military campaign that would crush the nation and remove them from power. So they took action, and within days Jesus was arrested and executed.

According to the New Testament, the murderous rage and unjust actions of Jesus’s enemies could not stop God from achieving his purpose. In fact, he incorporated them into his plan. God is, as the biblical writers never tire of saying, unstoppable. The hatred that put Jesus on a cross was no match for the love the laid him in a manger – and raised him from a grave.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 12/5/2015

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Completely misreading the situation

Posted on November 28, 2015 by salooper57

My friend Rob was spending a couple of days in Rome, seeing the sights. Instead of using public transportation, he opted to walk to the tourist spots. That way, if he saw something on the way that interested him, he could be spontaneous and stop.

He visited all the typical tourist spots, and a few more besides, but that meant that he walked about fifteen miles a day. By Sunday afternoon he was worn out. So he found a table at a local café, ate his meal, and was grateful for a little time to rest before his train departed.

The café was pleasant, the servers were kind, and Rob was comfortable. Then a man dressed in a restaurant uniform came into the café and the atmosphere immediately changed. The workers, who had been casual and relaxed, suddenly put their heads down and went to work. Rob surmised that the newcomer was the owner.

And that’s when it got weird. The man sat down at a table a few yards away from my friend and began to stare at him. Not the kind of stare that ends abruptly when eyes meet, but a stare-you-down, stare daggers, glower. The man never took his eyes off Rob. He sat still for ten minutes, just staring. And he didn’t look happy.

That was disconcerting enough, but when the man got up with a knife and other utensils and walked out of the room, things got even stranger. The moment he was out of sight, Rob’s server rushed to his table and said, “Get out of here. Right now. Don’t walk…run!”
Rob didn’t run, but he left. Shaken, he wondered what had just happened. Was this a gag that the restaurant staff plays on naïve Americans, a sort of Candid Camera, we-got-you practical joke? Or was the owner some kind of mafia kingpin who mistook Rob for someone else, or maybe just hates Americans or despises tall people with blue eyes?

Rob never found out what the owner was thinking, and it’s unlikely that he’ll go back to ask. Maybe he completely misread the situation, but why take chances?

Some people have a similar experience with God. They’re not at all sure what he thinks of them and, judging by appearances and other people’s comments, it might be better not to ask. As soon as they get the chance, they put a little distance between them and him.
In my friend Rob’s case, getting away from the café owner was probably the right thing to do. But when people allow themselves to be frightened away from God by the way they read a situation or by the remarks of some self-proclaimed expert, they’re making a mistake.

There were many self-proclaimed experts in Jesus’s day, eager to interpret God’s actions (or inactions). For example, when people were ill, they said that God was punishing them. That claim was based on a belief about God’s character that Jesus rejected. He explained (in Eugene Peterson’ paraphrase): “There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do.”

Many people saw God as a distant, yet angry, deity. Jesus helped people see God for what he is: a loving and intimate Father who “knows what you need before you ask him.”

When Jesus was on earth, it was widely assumed that God was principally interested in whether or not people kept the rules. But Jesus reimaged God. Rather than a persnickety rule-keeper, he insisted that God cares most about people’s hearts, because it is from there that things go right or go wrong. Jesus taught that God has never been satisfied for people just to keep the rules. He’s always wanted people’s hearts to be genuinely good and free to love.

Jesus also helped people understand how God thinks about “sinners.” The prevailing opinion was that God couldn’t stand them, but Jesus showed people a parent-like God who longs for his children to escape the sinful and destructive habits that are ruining their lives.

Jesus really is the expert on God who has, in the words of St. John, “shown us what God is like.” And it’s a good thing he has. Otherwise we, like my friend Rob and the café owner, would never really know what God is like or what he thinks about us.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 11/28/2015

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Posted on November 21, 2015 by salooper57

It’s funny how quickly things change. A few weeks ago, the Middle Eastern peoples flooding into Europe were refugees. They were unfortunates, driven from their homes and families by the horrors of war and persecution. A few weeks ago they were Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims. They were scared and cold and exhausted. They were babies and children. And their plight was heartbreaking.

But the ISIS attacks in Paris changed our nomenclature, and that changed our thinking. The immigrants were no longer refugees. They were potential terrorists. Their circumstances no longer broke our hearts. They threatened our way of life. And we stopped seeing them as persecuted Christians, Yazidis, and Muslims and started seeing them as death-dealing radicals.

Since Paris, the national debate over how to respond to the refugee crisis has become a debate about how to protect ourselves. There is a danger that we will allow our fear to drive us to act and speak in ways that are un-American. Are we, as a nation, really going to say, “Don’t give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”?

Worse yet, from my perspective, fear may drive us to act and speak in ways that are un-Christian. Making choices based on fear is simply not a Christian thing to do. St. Peter writes, “But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats. Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life.” Christians are called to act as representatives of Christ, even at the cost of personal safety and comfort.

Christians have a long history of risking their own safety to care for those in need. In the third century, at the height of Christian persecution, a terrifying plague swept across the Roman Empire. It has been estimated that 5,000 people a day were dying in Rome, including Christians. But Christians alone had the courage to care for the plague victims, including their persecutors.

This scenario has been reenacted many times. Only Christians were courageous enough to bury the dead during the Black Plague. At the height of the AIDS crisis, it was Christians who led the way in providing care. The same is true of the recent Ebola crisis. Now, in the current refugee crisis, Christians should be leading the way rather than backing away in fear. It is in situations like these that Christians repeatedly demonstrate the truth of the gospel they proclaim.

One young Middle Eastern family fled when they got word that the authorities were sending sword-wielding militants to their village. They took what possessions they could carry, left the rest, and abandoned their home in the middle of the night. Their terrifying escape soon became an exhausting journey. Their child was too young to keep up, so his parents had to take turns carrying him. They were hungry, weary and frightened.

They crossed rugged mountains and treacherous terrain. Warm days were followed by dangerously cold nights. The country to which they traveled did not welcome foreigners gladly. In fact, they looked down on them as inferiors and spoke about them in derogatory terms. The young family would have preferred to stay in their own country, had they been able. But they knew that staying would mean certain death.

The story of this young family is well-documented. You already know it. Their escape was not from war-torn Iraq or Syria, nor were they heading for Europe, nor were they were being terrorized by ISIS. Their journey began in Bethlehem, they were heading for Egypt, and they were being terrorized by an illegitimate ruler known as Herod the Great.

Jesus and his family were frightened refugees, who fled for their lives, just as many Syrian Christians and Muslims are doing today. If we turn our backs on these refugees now because they pose a threat to our security, how are we any different from the people who refused to receive Jesus and his family then?

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 11/21/2015.

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How to debug the programming

Posted on November 15, 2015 by salooper57

Back in the days of DOS, my first personal computer was giving me problems. It would sometimes fail to boot up from its “massive” 40 megabyte hard drive. I’d push the power button repeatedly until it finally started. When I shut it down, I never knew if it would start again.

So when my computer genius brother-in-law was at our home, I asked him to look at it. He got into the root directory and changed the autoexec.bat file while I watched. The computer performed better … for a while.

When I began having trouble again, I got into the root directory and altered the autoexec.bat file myself. I kept doing this each time there were problems, until a real computer guy pointed his finger at me and said ruthlessly, “Don’t ever do that again!” Nowadays, critical subroutines are placed in “Hidden Files,” where dolts like me can’t get to them.

A computer behaves the way it does because of a myriad of commands buried in tens of thousands of files hidden in its operating system. In just one key folder of the computer that I’m using right now there are almost 4,000 files, containing countless data. There are 20 other sub-folders in the Windows folder, with approximately twenty thousand additional files. And these folders do not even include the program files the computer needs to do work.

It is often asked whether computers have the potential to develop human-like intelligence. Science fiction writers usually say yes, scientists and philosophers usually say no. According to Ryan Whitwam of ExtremeTech, researchers have recently managed to simulate one second of human brain activity in a computer. Whitwam writes, “It took 40 minutes with the combined muscle of 82,944 processors … to get just 1 second of biological brain processing time.” Of course biological processing time is a million miles away from human consciousness.

There are all kinds of differences between a human being and a computer, but there is an important similarity: each operates from stored and often hidden information. Humans, like computers, are programmed. Some of that programming is from nature and some is from nurture, just as some of a computer’s programming is contained in the operating system (nature) and some in the program files (nurture). Of course human programming is unimaginably more extensive and complicated than that of a computer.

When later programming causes conflicts with original programming, things go wrong. A computer might crash. So might a person. A computer might produce nonsense. So might a person. A computer’s performance, like a person’s, might slowly deteriorate.

Christians (among many others) think that humans were made and programmed by a Creator. They do not believe that humanity came into existence through blind processes, not even over the space of millions of years. They believe in a Programmer. And further, they think that the original programming has been written over, causing humanity much suffering.

This explains why the world is full of injustice, hatred and violence. Our programming has been altered. Even seemingly innocuous changes can have catastrophic results, as I learned when I rewrote the autoexec.bat file on my old computer.

Can the damage to earth and humanity be undone? Christians believe it can, one human at a time. A person meets God through Jesus Christ, asks and receives forgiveness for the mess she’s made of things, and allows God to make corrections. In biblical parlance, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Often people have no idea why things have gone so wrong. They just know that life is running poorly and sometimes crashes. They live in conflict with their own programming and with just about everything else. The good news is that they can bring the whole mess to the original Programmer, and ask him to debug the programming and do whatever else is needed.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 11/14/2015

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Playing pinball with a new Lincoln

Posted on November 7, 2015 by salooper57

It is often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It seems to me that is not so much a definition of insanity as it is a description of humanity.

As a local church pastor, I’ve seen it more times than I can count, and done it more times than I care to admit. I’ve seen married couples have the same argument over and over, make the same points (only louder), and expect it to turn out differently than it did last time.

Seeing addicts go through a repeating cycle of choices and consequences feels like “déjà vu all over again.” They end up slogging through the same relational and occupational morass they’ve been caught in countless times before. The people that love them then go through the steps of a ritual dance they know by heart. It’s a dance of rescue, then anger, then alienation. But nothing ever changes.

Young couples who were sacrificed on the altar of the American Dream by parents they’ve never forgiven start worshiping at the same altar in their twenties and sacrificing their own children by their thirties. Their children don’t forgive them either, but just give them twenty years and they’ll be bowing at that same altar, their children bound for sacrifice.

The Apostle Paul, one of history’s most influential people, saw this kind of repetitive failure in others and in himself. He wrote, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

I was once in a fishing camp in northwestern Ontario, lying on my bed reading, late at night, when I heard a loud thud. I paused for a moment, then went on reading. Perhaps thirty seconds later I heard another loud thud. I got up and peered out the window.

In the darkness I could make out a black Lincoln. Its driver had hit one tree with his front bumper, then backed into a stump. I watched as he pulled forward and hit the same tree he’d hit before, then backed again into the same stump. It looked like he was playing pinball with a new Lincoln.

I threw some clothes on and went out to help. He was standing next to his car, surveying the territory, wondering (in his very inebriated state) why the trees were attacking him. I asked where his cabin was (it was nowhere near) and offered to drive him to it. When he saw me the next day at the lodge, he looked at me doubtfully and said, “Are you the guy…?”

Sometimes when I see people now, doing the same thing over and over and yet expecting a different result, I feel like I’m watching my hapless friend in the Lincoln. He was doing the best he could in his impaired condition, but his best was never going to get him where he wanted to go. He needed help from the outside.

Christian teaching says the same about all of us. We are impaired by sin and, try as we may, we cannot reach our destination, which is a life of mutual love with God and people. We’ll never get there, doing what we’re doing, but we keep doing it anyway. We get back in our Lincoln and drive smack-dab into the same old tree. We need help from the outside.

The biblical writers operate from the assumption that humanity is stuck and cannot get free. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.” We’ve fallen and can’t get up. We’re stuck and can’t get out.

This discouraging analysis is thoroughly, but not comprehensively, biblical. There is, thankfully, more to the story. The good news is that God does not expect us to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, nor is he content to watch us run endlessly into the same obstacles. The Bible tells us that help from the outside has arrived in the person of Jesus. It is, however, still up to us whether we’ll let him in, give him the keys, and allow him to lead us where we need to go.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 11/7/2015

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