The Way Home

I cannot count the times I’ve heard people say, “I don’t know how anyone can look at this world and not believe in God.” But I’ve also known people to say, “I don’t know how anyone can look at the world and still believe in God.” Why is it that two people, both intelligent and well-educated, can look at the same data and come away with different conclusions?

People in the first group look at the world and sees beauty, order and complexity. It is obvious to them that the universe is a work of art and that, therefore, there must be an artist.

People in the second group look at the world and see squalor, injustice and suffering. It is obvious to them that the universe is an accident, formed out of chaos and always on the verge of returning to it.

The first group sees in nature the incredibly delicate balance necessary for physical life, and concludes that the universe was planned by a designer. They see that an increase in the mass of neutrinos (which are 500,000 times smaller than an electron) from 5 x 10^-34 to 5 x 10^-35 would make the universe uninhabitable. They see that if gravity was the tiniest fraction weaker or electromagnetism the tiniest fraction stronger, stars like our sun would not exist – nor would we.

They see these and dozens of other exquisite balances in nature, without which life could not exist, and conclude with certainty that there is a creator. But equally intelligent people look at these remarkable balances and see mere coincidence.

One explanation for these contradictory conclusions may be that people are conditioned by temperament and upbringing to look at different aspects of a situation and so draw different conclusions. One person sees a glass that is half-full and hardly notices that it is also half-empty. A second sees a glass that is half-empty and is blind to the half that is full. A third couldn’t tell you whether the glass is empty or full, but sees every water spot the dishwasher left.

These people not only see different things, they cannot believe that others do not see them as well. The person who believes in God suspects that the unbeliever is willfully obtuse. Otherwise, how could he or she miss the evidence of an intelligent creator? Of course the unbeliever suspects the believer deliberately overlooks the chaotic randomness of disaster and pain. How could anyone believe in God after the 2004 tsunami? Or Hurricane Katrina? Or the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur? The list goes on and on.

Theologians offer a very different way to account for these differences. Rather than interpreting them in terms of temperament or upbringing, they explain them in terms of God’s work in a person’s life. Only if God grants a person the power (or “grace”) to believe, will he be able to do so. Whenever anyone believes, it is always because God has enabled him to do so.

According to this explanation, the difference between John Polkinghorne, the Oxford physicist turned Anglican priest, and Richard Dawkins, the Oxford biologist and outspoken atheist, is that one received grace from God and the other did not. In this view Polkinghorne believes because he has had supernatural help that Dawkins has lacked.

A subset of this view holds that, while a person can only believe if God helps him, God is ready to help everyone. In this version, if a person does not believe it is because he has not availed himself of God’s proffered help. God will leap to the aid of any person, Richard Dawkins included, who chooses to know the truth and pursue it.

Can a person who would like to believe, but whose doubts keeps getting in the way, do anything to get clarity? He can. Even though he isn’t sure whether God is listening, he can ask him for help. Then he can follow up by doing the thing he knows a good and loving God would want him to do. Jesus endorsed this procedure by laying down this principle: “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God…” (John 17:7)

First published in the Coldwater Daily Reporter, 8/17/13

Generations of people in the western world were brought up to believe in Jesus. They were taught that he was the good and loving Son of God who died for people’s sins and was resurrected three days later. They seldom think about these claims, but they do believe them.

And not only do they believe in the veracity of the claims, they believe in Jesus. They go beyond acceptance of the propositional truths of Christianity to form a trust-connection with Jesus. They rely on him for help in this life and put their hope in him for the life to come.

This idea of “believing in Jesus” is deeply rooted in the New Testament. The best-known verse in the entire Bible states: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Believing in him (or “into him,” as the original language has it) indicates reliance on a person, not just acceptance of a proposition.

Millions of people – perhaps billions – believe in Jesus in this way. But is it possible to believe in Jesus without believing what he believed?

It certainly seems to be. Many people who claim to believe in Jesus have no idea what Jesus believed. They’ve never read the Gospel accounts of him, nor do they have the slightest idea what he taught.

This ignorance is due, in part, to the unfortunate rift in Protestant Christianity that left conservatives stressing Jesus’ role as savior almost to the exclusion of his role as teacher. The result has been disastrous. People who have rightly trusted Jesus to be their savior have, tragically, never trusted him to be their teacher. They expect him to save them when they die, but they don’t expect him to teach them how to live.

While it is possible to “believe in Jesus” without believing what he believed, it is impossible to obey Jesus without believing what he believed. One cannot consistently follow Jesus’ instructions while holding beliefs that are in conflict with his own.

This explains why so many people who profess faith in Jesus (and do so sincerely) lead lives totally unlike the one to which he called his followers. Whenever Jesus’ instructions are introduced into an incompatible worldview (such as the dominant worldview in western culture), they will seem unrealistic – and sometimes preposterously so. But within the context of Jesus’ own beliefs about God, himself and the world, his instructions make perfect sense.

Jesus told us, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.” But we are storage experts. We store our surplus goods in rented storage units and our extra money in retirement accounts because we believe our future well-being depends on accumulating more and more. But Jesus believed in a God who was attentive to his needs and concerned for his welfare. He was at liberty to share his present resources, whether time or money, because he was confident that his heavenly Father would provide for his future needs.

Or take the requirement that his followers must deny themselves in order to follow him. This flies in the face not only of cultural wisdom, but of personal instinct. But if Jesus was right that self-denial necessarily precedes self-fulfillment – that only a person who loses his (counterfeit) life can ever find his true one – then this instruction is completely logical.

St. John says that “his commands are not burdensome.” That may be true, but they will certainly seem burdensome until the people who “believe in Jesus” actually believe what Jesus believed – and taught.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, August 10, 2013

As a pastor I have officiated at many funeral services as well as many wedding celebrations. To my knowledge, everyone I’ve ever buried has stayed buried, at least to the present time. It would be disturbing to find it otherwise. But not everyone I’ve married has stayed married. That is disturbing too.

Through the Old Testament prophet God said, “I hate divorce” (Malachi 2:16). It’s not hard to understand why. Divorce destroys families and shatters individual’s identities. This is not only true of adults but also of children, since more than half of all divorces involve children under the age of 18.

Divorce negatively effects children. Children of divorce score lower in academic testing. They are less likely to succeed in school and more likely to live below the poverty level. They are also more likely to divorce when they get married. A study from the University of Toronto also suggests they are more likely to smoke, to drop out of school, to engage in criminal behavior, to suffer a stroke and to die an early death. No wonder God hates divorce.

Over the years I have repeatedly seen parents use their children as weapons to harry or intimidate their exes. Very often the children – especially when they reach teenage years – realize that they have been used as weapons. When, somewhere down the road, the weapon arms itself, everyone is going to get hurt.

Because I have seen this happen again and again, I try to help the couples whose wedding I officiate to divorce-proof their marriages. They take an assessment that helps them see where their relationship may need help. They meet four to six times with a mentor couple to discuss the results, talk through disagreements and come up with a plan on how to handle difficulty. We also plan a follow-up session to take place a few months after they are married.

I always ask couples to think through what steps they will take if their marriage becomes dissatisfying. Will they go to a pastor for advice? Will they seek counseling? If I think they’re unwilling to prevent divorce, I’m unwilling to officiate at their wedding ceremony.

Yet even with the premarital counseling, the mentoring and the follow-up, some couples still decide to get divorced – though in their wedding vows they sincerely promised to take each other no matter what might happen, until death parted them. What happened?

The usual answer is that one or the other (or both) spouses no longer feel the way they felt when they got married. They say things like, “I just don’t love him anymore.” And because their feelings have changed, they believe they are justified – and sometimes even obligated – to break their vows. Instead of “Until death do us part” it is “Until our feelings do us part.”

This is hardly surprising in a culture like ours that makes its decisions almost entirely on the basis of feelings. But someone should have told these folks that love is more than a feeling. Someone should have told them that feelings come and go and change and, as such, do not provide a stable foundation for marriage. Someone should have told them. Someone did.

Falling in love is a beautiful thing, but it simply cannot supply an adequate foundation for entering into marriage. According to researchers, the emotional experience of “being in love” has a lifespan of just six months to two years. For marriage to last, the feeling of “being in love” must give way (or better, flow into) a settled and intentional practice of love. The source of this more difficult (and more rewarding) kind of love is not found outside oneself in one’s lover, nor inside oneself in one’s willpower, but above, in the God from whom true love comes.

Published first in the Coldwater Daily Reporter, 8-3-13

I’ve finally learned (but will I remember) how to add sermon to the “From the Pulpit” page. Click on that link above and listen to a new sermon from the Gospel of Luke titled, “Everybody’s Invited.”

The social contract in its broadest sense – the shared commitments that lead to recognized standards and provide individuals and groups with a sense of stability – is being replaced by an individual mandate: that individuals must be happy. This mandate requires people to be free to follow feelings wherever they lead, even if doing so destroys relationships or sacrifices integrity.

The concept of freedom upon which this individual mandate is founded was unknown to previous generations. These days freedom is thought of as the right – and sometimes the obligation – to throw off any constraint that hinders the fulfillment of one’s desires. If marriage vows or employment contracts get in the way of happiness, then one is justified in terminating them. This idea surfaces again and again in today’s most popular books and movies.

Even though this individualistic approach to freedom ignores the good of one’s community and even family, it still generates a great deal of energy in our society. This is true not only in the arts but also in politics, on both side of the political spectrum. For example, liberals could not have found a “right to an abortion” in the Constitution apart from this highly individualistic view of freedom. On the conservative side, the argument against gun control draws heavily from it, if not for intellectual validation, at least for emotional appeal.

This notion of freedom would have seemed wrongheaded to our forefathers. They would not have seen it as an extension of the inalienable right to pursue happiness but as an inherent wrong that is guaranteed to alienate people from one another.

Nevertheless, this is the culture we live in today: fiercely individualistic, libertarian (if not in creed, then in practice) and dominated by feelings in a way that has only rarely been matched in history, and even then only in small pockets of society. Feelings (including sensations, emotions and desires) are the tyrants of our age. Feeling is king. It may even be god. Every age has its idolatries. Ours is the idolatry of feelings.

People today find it difficult to distinguish between themselves and their feelings, particularly their desires. If a prophet in the 1940s had predicted that the day would come when groups of people would identify themselves primarily by their sexual desires, as they do today (“I’m straight” or “I’m gay”), people would have laughed at him. But it is has happened. People today do not merely have feelings; they are their feelings.

This can only prove disastrous, on both a personal level and a societal level. On a personal level, this supremacy of feelings will quickly destroy a life. As Dallas Willard once put it, “The mind becomes a fearful wilderness and a wild intermixture of thought and feeling, manifested in willful stupidities, blatant inconsistencies, and confusions…”

The ascendency of feeling has led to a culture of addiction. “Addiction is a feeling phenomenon,” says Willard. “The addict is one who, in one way or another, has given in to feeling … and has placed it in the position of ultimate value in his or her life.” Having given in, he or she is under compulsion to obey the feeling. Its power to rule has been granted.

But when feelings rule, chaos reigns. Decisions on long-term issues are generated by short-term emotions. Addictions take root, families take flight and intelligent discourse vanishes. Instead of tackling problems, leaders try to manipulate feelings – an apt description of political, religious and business strategies today.

This is not to say that feelings are somehow wrong or ought to be repressed. They are good and ought to be felt. But God intended us to rule our feelings, not to be ruled by them.

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, July 27, 2013

The George Zimmerman trial has once again revealed to us and to the world the deep racial wounds that continue to cause the nation pain and suffering. One of the jurors said that the case was not about race, but the way America thought about the case certainly was.

After the verdict was announced, President Obama urged Americans to ask ourselves if “we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities.” It is a question well worth asking.

Former President Jimmy Carter, after asserting that the jury reached the right decision, said that Americans (and African-Americans in particular) must ask what we can “do about the present and the future.”

Well, what can we do? Can black Americans “put aside their feelings about the past,” as Mr. Carter put it? Can white Americans somehow help them do so? Or is America doomed to suffer from the racial wounds of the past throughout its lifetime as a nation?

Both Presidents Obama and Carter look for a day when America has been healed of those wounds, but neither offered any course of treatment to bring that about. Can anything be done and, if so, what?

We’ve tried education – that was our first treatment option. We tried bussing poorer black students to school systems in more affluent white neighborhoods, but success there has been limited. We’ve tried using Affirmative Action legislation to heal the wounds, but that seems to have had unintended side effects that frequently make the nation sick.

We’ve tried to make home ownership possible for more people, but that helped bring about the housing crisis from which we are only now recovering. We’ve funded an entire department of government – Housing and Urban Development –employing over 9,000 people. Nevertheless, many urban neighborhoods are half-deserted and still completely segregated.

These efforts, and many more like them, have been well-intended but have yielded limited and, frankly, disappointing results. We have not been able to educate, legislate or motivate racial harmony through these means. So what is left? Is our nation destined to suffer these racial upheavals forever?

It seems to me that the hope for racial healing is spiritual, not physical, and that it will come through the Church, not the government. One thing that blacks and whites have shared throughout the history of the United States is a common devotion to God, centered in Jesus Christ. Whenever our nation has made significant progress in racial healing – the abolition of slavery, voter’s rights, the Civil Rights movement – the Church has been deeply involved.

But the Church itself has been racially divided. There aren’t many black Presbyterians and there aren’t many white Missionary Baptists. It has been said that in America the most segregated hour of the week starts on Sundays at 11:00.

That is not easy to change. While blacks and whites share a common faith in Jesus Christ, they practice different ways of expressing their devotion: different worship styles, a different musical heritage and a different approach to preaching and teaching. It is not – at least it is not primarily – racial prejudice that divides the church, but a prejudice for worship styles.

Can it be overcome? I hope so. I believe so. But only when white Americans and black Americans – or, to be more precise, white Christians and black Christians – work to make it so.

I had a dream recently. In my dream I had resigned my position in the church I have served for twenty-five years to take a position in a smaller church that was racially diverse. I found the idea of leading an integrated church exhilarating. (It had been my hope to integrate the small church I pastored in a rustbelt community many years ago, but I was unsuccessful).

In my dream my wife and I came to the church on our very first Sunday, only to find all the white members in the sanctuary and all the black members in the fellowship hall. I was disheartened and bewildered. Would things never change?

I wonder that still, though I am hopeful. But I don’t think things will change because of organized programs to increase racial understanding, though such programs are to be applauded. I think things will change when the love of Christ moves black and white Christians to befriend one another, to open their homes and share their meals, to play games and live life in community.

This would, frankly, be a miracle, but it is the kind of miracle that Christ himself likes to perform – Christ in whom “there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all (Colossians 3:11).

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, July 20, 2013

John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace,” once wrote: “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”

Newton did not, apparently, think of himself as a fixed or static, still less as a completed, person. He was a person in process, a being in the making. Although he operated from a fixed, static point – the “I am” of the present moment – Newton realized that he was in some respects incomplete. His true self awaited fulfillment.

Newton was not alone in expressing this idea. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard famously said, “And now, with God’s help, I shall become myself.” John Lennon expressed a similar view in the Beatle’s song “All You Need Is Love” when he optimistically wrote, “You can learn how to be you in time; it’s easy.”

The idea that we are not fully formed in this lifetime offers opportunity for reflection. If it is true, I can never use the word “I” without doing so provisionally. “I” – whatever else I may be – am conditional, which implies the possibility that the conditions necessary to become fully “me” may go unmet. And that thought leads me on to wonder what those conditions might be.

Go further: If I am not yet “I” (in the fullest sense of the word), what, if anything, needs to happen before I can truly become myself? And if something does need to happen, whose responsibility is it? Is it someone else’s – a supernatural “soul sculptor” of sorts – or is it mine? Or is it possible that the work is neither all his nor all mine, that the divine artist has given me the great honor of contributing to the work of sculpting my true self?

This seems to me to be the case, for it corresponds well with Christian teaching. The apostle Paul described the cooperative nature of this work in these famous words: “…work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you…” (Philippians 2:12-13). The divine artist works in the living medium of human souls, which, unlike all other artistic media, is capable of collaborating with the artist or of resisting his efforts.

If that is true and I fail (or worse, refuse) to collaborate with the artist, is there a chance that I may fail to become my true self? It seems a terrifying possibility. And what happens to a person who misses himself – eternally? Is hell simply the un-resting place of the unformed, the people who never truly became themselves? Or is it the destiny of the deformed – the people who rejected the artist’s design and followed their own?

Contemplating these possibilities motivates me to discover the divine artist’s original design for my life. It also instills within me a desire to understand his artistic method so that I can cooperate with him. But it does more than that: It leads me beyond thoughts of myself to thoughts of my neighbor, for if I am not yet complete, neither is he.

The idea that my neighbor is still a work in progress serves me in two ways. First, it helps me place my neighbor, with all his fault and foibles, in a broader context. When I remember that he, with his short temper, long stories and ridiculous habits is like me – still unfinished – I am able to bear with his foibles and failures as I bear with my own, knowing that there is more to him than meets the eye.

Likewise, the realization that the teenager who is getting my coffee at Macdonald’s – the one with all the piercings – is a work of art, cherished by the artist, deepens my appreciation for him and reminds me to relate to him with respect and humility. I do not know what the divine artist is making out of him – this tattooed and pierced guy behind the Macdonald’s counter – but whatever he has in mind is worthy of my admiration and respect. And if there is a way to assist the great artist – with a prayer, a smile or a kind word – I will want to give that too.

Published first in the Coldwater Daily Reporter, July 13, 2013

The English colonies in America began with land grants made by James I to the London and Plymouth Companies, and developed as business entities managed by shareholders or proprietors in the pursuit of financial gain. Georgia, the last of the thirteen colonies to be chartered, proved to be the exception. Its founder envisioned it as a place where debtors and the “worthy poor” could flourish, though the Crown was more interested in its value as a buffer between Spanish-held territory to the south and its income-producing colonies to the north.

In the beginning, the American companies – whether the Massachusetts Bay Company or the Virginia Company or Lord Baltimore’s Maryland province – were in competition with each other. But as the decades (and centuries in the case of Virginia and the New England colonies) rolled by, their people increasingly recognized their common interests and bemoaned their common injuries.

When representatives of the thirteen colonies assembled in congress on July 4, 1776, they issued a very solemn Declaration of Independence from the British Crown. But before declaring the colonies to be “free and independent states,” the signers emphasized that they were in unanimous agreement as the “thirteen united States of America.”

The representatives recognized their own limitations. They understood that they could not successfully declare their independence from Great Britain without acknowledging their dependence upon one another. Independence from a greater power requires dependence upon another power, whether the collective power of individual states or the ultimate power of a divine being. The founding fathers acknowledged their dependence upon both.

How could Virginia, Pennsylvania or New Jersey stand alone in their independence from Great Britain? They could not. They could only achieve independence through a right and proper dependence upon one another.

This principle that independence is gained through dependence proves true in a variety of contexts. The addict’s independence from the substance or behavior that controls him requires dependence upon an accountability partner or support group and on divine assistance. Independence from an abusive spouse or parent will require dependence upon caring friends and counselors. Independence from mom and dad requires dependence on employers and hard work.

There is no such thing as absolute independence among finite, and therefore dependent, beings. Independence is, and must always be, relative. The man who fancies himself completely self-reliant only fools himself. He is utterly incapable of making his own heart beat or extending his life one minute longer. To such a man St. Paul asks, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”

This is something that is hard for us, schooled as we are in rugged individualism, to remember. We see it across the spectrum of American life. Republicans and Democrats think that they can govern independently of one another. The one-percenters think they can do without the rest of the country, and the rest of the country thinks it can do without them. Racial and ethnic majorities and minorities alike flout one another.

While independence from a hostile power may require dependence upon a friendly one, it is still necessary to use caution in choosing the “friendly power” upon which we rely. Unless it frees us (individually and as a nation) to fulfill our potential, we have chosen the wrong power. That freedom is one God routinely grants and I, for one, gladly declare my dependence on him.

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, July 6, 2013

Although the experience of shame is universal, it is difficult to define. We can rightly distinguish shame from guilt – shame has to do with what I am, guilt with what I have done – but we are still left to wonder what shame is. The cause of shame and its cure is, by its very nature, hidden. (The root of the Old English word shame means “to cover.”)

We are profoundly more aware of the negative consequences of shame than were our parents and grandparents. We know that shame is toxic. It distorts our reason and transforms our moods. We hide from its pain in destructive behaviors that mar our self-image and destroy our relationships. This in turn reinforces the shame and starts spinning the cycle all over again.

When people are controlled – often without their knowledge – by shame, they manifest any of a number of common behaviors. They may exercise rigid control over their environment, fly into a rage, develop perfectionistic tendencies, procrastinate, or fall into addiction. They exaggerate both their successes and failures and live forever on the borders of deceit.

Recognizing that shame is toxic, modern society has taken steps to “de-shame” many of the behaviors that made our parents and grandparents blush. Today, for example, adultery has become a “low-shame” behavior. Just consider former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, whose adultery and dishonesty cost him his office but who has made a stunning comeback by running for, and winning, a congressional district seat.

Two years ago Congressman Anthony Weiner was driven from public office after being caught “sexting,” But this week The Huffington Post reported that he is the frontrunner for the office of New York City mayor. At one time his actions would have made him a political pariah, but in a culture that has largely “de-shamed” any and all sexual behavior, the stigma has faded.

Some conduct remains culturally shameful – just ask Paula Dean. The use of racial or sexual orientation slurs still make society stand up and say, “Shame on you!” But that’s about it, and one wonders how long it will be before even these behaviors are practiced without shame.

Am I suggesting that shame really isn’t such a bad thing, or that using shame to control people’s behaviors might be appropriate after all?

Not in the least. Shame is harmful and must be dealt with if a person is to enjoy a meaningful and productive life. But our wholesale de-shaming of behaviors will prove an ineffective way of dealing with the problem, because shame – unlike guilt – is not a product of behavior. Whereas guilt says, “I am wrong because I have done this,” shame says, “I have done this because I am wrong.”

If this is true, our culture’s well-intentioned attempts to eliminate shame by surgically deadening our moral nerves is profoundly misguided. It is the ethical equivalent of performing a lobotomy to relieve a headache.

The Bible teaches that the ultimate cause of shame is spiritual, not psychological. It is rooted in humanity’s dislocation from God and can only be cured by a life-giving connection with God and a life-sharing connection with people.

The Bible begins with a man and woman completely free of shame, a state that we can now only imagine. By their own choice they became estranged from God and, in so doing, were left defenseless against shame. It became a constant and bitter part of the human experience. But God has promised to liberate humanity from the burden of shame – a promise that certainly means more than any of us can now comprehend.

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, June 29, 2013