non-metaphysical stephen

Sometimes I wonder if the modern Republican party is the worst threat to American Christianity….

I’m really having a hard time pinning down the reasons for my own disgust of and anger with the GOP. I honestly can’t stand to hear them on TV or the radio–I don’t want to give their ideas any credence at all. My partner thinks this is hypocritical, so I’m trying to ensure that I have good reason for my radical avoidance.

In short, I have two reasons for not even wanting to listen to the conservative pundits:

1. I don’t trust them. They have twisted the truth for years, and they have admitted they aren’t interested in working on any of the Democratic platforms. Their whole effort these days seems to be to ensure that the Democrats fail. They don’t want to help citizens; they simply want to regain power. This disgusts me. So I don’t trust anything they say.
2. (And I hope this is more important:) As a Christian, I disagree with their goals. I don’t see Jesus in the GOP’s platform. I don’t see how they are modeling the Realm of God. I only see a bunch of Pharisees (the devout but judgmental types) and Sadducees (the non-believing church types) who want to exert control over the culture. As a Christian, I simply can’t accept what they want this country to look like.

Quite honestly, I think the GOP and the Religious Right have made an idol out of the country (the “we’re the greatest nation ever” motif). I think they care more about the USA than about the Realm of God. I’m sure the progressives do the same thing, but they usually aren’t claiming to speak for the Word of God either. (And I do need to watch that I don’t equate the Democrats and Progressives with God’s will.)

I want to be concerned more with God’s people than with the nation. As a Christian, my citizenship is in God’s country; the USA means little to me other than a temporary homeland. I am less concerned with preserving democracy and capitalism than I am with working to ensure that all people can be treated fairly and not be oppressed by those in power. And I don’t see that as the goal of the GOP–instead, I see them laying burdens on the weak and exalting themselves.

May God heal the divisions among us. May God deliver us from bad leaders and raise us up to be people of light, truth and universal fellowship. And may God have mercy on this nation and lead us into charity and humility.

In Christ,

Amen.

I was in an awkward situation today in which I had to listen to one of my colleagues make anti-Obama comments. It was one of those tense moments where you find yourself thinking, “I wish I didn’t know that about you.” I found myself getting riled up, but since it wasn’t my conversation and since it was someone I work with on a regular basis, I had to act as if it didn’t bother me.

But why did it bother me? Why do I find political disagreement so much more aggravating than religious disagreement? Why am I tempted to write off people whose politics are different from mine? Is that would Jesus would do? Is that what Jesus did? (more…)

Sigh.

Been one of those semesters. I’ve felt off my game all term. Probably part of being in my first year at a new school and not being certain if my job will be safe (it is, but that’s a recent development). Lots of uncertainty in my life, lack of clear direction, doubts about what I want to be doing, etc. General tiredness and a sense that now that I’m out of school, there’s no short-term goal to keep me focused.

So I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’m doing, where I’m headed, whether I’m on the right track, etc. And my sense of my own faithfulness to God is very weak. I want to be faithful, but I feel that I’ve jumped ship somewhere along the way without even realizing it. And I recognize how truly half-hearted I am and how attached to the world I’ve been. And yet delusional about my own ability to witness to the transforming work of God — I have a very inflated sense of self-worth.

Sigh. I even feel too tired to put in the effort to get back on track — I should pray, but I’d rather nap. Or I try to pray and end up napping — like the disciples in the garden.

LORD, forgive me — the spirit is somewhat willing, the body is both weak AND rebellious….

This morning a couple of images came to my mind during my prayers, both of them related to my future and my attempts to discern God’s direction for me as I prepare to graduate and move on to a career.

1) I am at the border of the Red Sea, wondering whether to walk into the water or to wait for them to part for me. Then I realize I’m already in the water, and it’s getting deeper as the current continues to push the water around me. I cannot see the bottom, so I have no idea how much farther I can walk before I can no longer touch the ground without going completely underwater. And, I have no idea how much longer I will have to move forward before things get easier for me. Will God part the water? Or will God strengthen me to swim to the other side? Keep the faith and expect both….

2) I am at a fork in the road — three prongs. I know what the three roads are, but I cannot see which one leads to the Kingdom. Or do all three lead there? I do not know which road I am meant to take; all three seem desirable, and yet I cannot take them all. Perhaps they eventually come back together into one larger road? Meanwhile, should I continue on the road I have long thought I was meant to take? Or should I wait for clearer direction?

May it be done with me according to God’s will. God has led me into this Wilderness, and God will provide all that I need. My prayer is that I may be faithful to walk with Christ and that I may be fruitful for Christ’s kingdom.

Amen.

An interesting thing happened last night while listening to the radio. The station was playing a live version of John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane,” and I started to realize something about myself and what I wanted from my life. No, not a little pink house….

Hearing the live version, I started to wonder how much time and effort Mellencamp has put into his music career. I thought about how badly he (like other successful musicians) must have wanted it, fought for it, sacrificed for it. How much time does he devote to rehearsing his performances, so that they’ll be just right and that he’ll be in full control at the mic? How focused has he been on obtaining and maintaining his status?

What I began to realize about myself is how much I crave serving God’s people. That wasn’t a surprise in itself, but I started to wonder if maybe I wanted a college teaching job as much as I had always thought. I love teaching, but if I had to choose between teaching and service, which am I willing to leave to the side? Am I devoted enough to teaching to perform diligently the research and writing and publishing that attends most academic careers? I don’t know. I’m not a particularly enthusiastic researcher now; would that truly change once I’m employed?

May God help me to discern what God’s call is for me. And may God deliver me from all that would distract me from God’s will and open the doors for me to serve the Church of Christ Jesus. Amen.

God knows.

God knows how it feels to get the silent treatment.
God knows how it feels when someone gets angry with you.
God knows how it feels when someone walks out on you.
God knows.
God knows how it feels to be uncertain how someone will react.
God knows how it feels to wonder if someone will return.
God knows how it feels to worry about friends.
God knows.
God knows the pains of love,

Because we have given God the silent treatment,
Because we have gotten angry with God,
Because we have walked out on God,
Because we have rejected God, rebelled against God, refused to listen to what God has to say.

Because we have not loved God as God loves us,
God knows the pains of love.

Because the job search is throwing me into confusion about which direction God wants me to take, I took some time this morning to recall God’s direction in the past:

I remember being a music student at Miami and realizing that my education wasn’t teaching me how to participate in the daily requirements of civic life; e.g., I could analyze Bach, but I couldn’t analyze political rhetoric. And I remember remembering some literature I had received after taking the PSAT in high school — information about a small, liberal arts school named St. John’s College. I had tossed it aside in high school — I didn’t want to read books in college! — but God brought it back to my mind, and I was soon convinced that this would be a better education for me.

I recall praying about this decision for some time — agonizingly, since it is a big decision to leave one school and start over completely somewhere else — and noticing how often I ran across references to Santa Fe or to New Mexico. It seemed to me that God was directing the universe to point towards St. John’s. And I am glad He did — enrolling was one of the best things I have ever done.

I recall that years later, I was enrolled in the MFA theater program at U. Georgia but had realized that it really wasn’t the right career for me and was looking at going to seminary. I had considered Emory’s program in music ministry (since I was living nearby), but was shocked to realize how unimportant the ministry component of that degree was — it was really a program for musicians who wanted church jobs, not for people who felt called to ministry. I had also considered crossing the street (literally) and going into the Comparative Literature program at Georgia, but I really had my heart set on pursuing either dramatic literature or ministry — I just didn’t know which.

I remembered that Boston U. had a theology school, and that I had considered going there when I was at Miami. So I got an application and prepared to fill it out. I had been praying for several months about what to do, but never felt any definite response. Certainly nothing like what had happened with St. John’s. But when I sat down with the application in my hand, I offered a quick prayer to God: “Is this what You want me to do, or do You have something else in mind?”

The answer surprised me: “Go into Comp Lit.”

Certainly not what I was expecting, nor even what I wanted, really. But I figured if I was hearing some false voice, God would soon show me my error and would lead me back to where He wanted me. But Comp Lit turned out to be wonderful, and within three months of enrolling, I had presented my first conference paper (on the medieval Christian dramatist Hrotsvit, interestingly enough, and commissioned, too — God knows my interests!).

I recall being in the final year of my M.A. program, feeling very uncertain about pursuing a Ph.D. (too much research!), but not sure what to do instead. I assumed I would be looking for teaching jobs at community colleges or private high schools. But one night, as I prayed about this, I was reminded that St. John’s had a Master’s program in Eastern Classics, and I felt that God was telling me to go there. This direction actually made sense, for I had been assigned World Literature as my first teaching job, even though I had very little experience with non-Western lit, and I realized that if World Lit was becoming a regular course offering around the country, I should get a better background in it. I had never been interested in Asian literature before (in fact, I had been warned that the popularity of Asian religions was undermining Christianity), but I was soon hooked on how beautiful and thought provoking it is.

After I finished the second M.A., though, I hadn’t been able to find a job (not even at the community college near my parents’ house!), and was spending a very miserable year facing the prospects of having to get a business job and of never being able to do the kind of work I like. Some ideas for a Ph.D. project in an area that truly interested me — devotional literature — popped into my head one day (while showering, not while planning my future), and when I mentioned them to my former professors at UGA, they said they sounded great. Plus, UGA had the resources to allow me to study Comp Lit and Religion (not a common combination, I found), and the department wanted to put me up for a prestigious fellowship. (And, I wouldn’t have to re-take my language exams!)

So, late in the fall, I started composing my application, still not totally sure whether this was something I was able to finish or even whether God wanted me to do it.

And then, disaster struck. I had miscalculated the winter vacation schedule for the administration offices at St. John’s and hadn’t gotten my transcript request in on time. The office would not re-open until after my UGA application deadline had passed. I was sunk — both professionally and emotionally.

And then, a miracle struck. I got a phone call on December 26th from a student worker at the registrar’s office, informing me that my transcript was going out that day. I couldn’t believe it — the office had been closed for one week and was supposed to be closed for at least one more; why was a student working in the office AFTER Christmas? It was the sign I needed from God that He really and truly wanted me to do this degree.

I have really enjoyed my 4.5 years as a doctoral student. I see that God allowed me to wait until I had a good sense of what I wanted to do, and that G0d has provided the support network I need to make it happen. It hasn’t always been easy — I often feel divided between the areas I am writing about and the areas I am teaching, and not sure which one God wants me to pursue next. But I am trusting that God is in control of my career, and that the application process will show me which direction God wants me to go.

And if God wants me to pursue something outside of academia, I trust that He will make that clear and open those doors as well. I am nothing outside of what God has made me, and I want my life to fulfill His calling, for only in Him do I truly live.

Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders work in vain.

May it be with me according to God’s word,
Amen.

The choir sang “There Is a Love” today, so I used it as the theme for my communion liturgy:

The table is God’s sign that there is a love that knows no limits. It signifies God’s act of pouring himself out for us, giving himself completely for our sakes, becoming one of us and refusing to let us go (even when we turned our backs on him).

Although it would seem that God’s gift is so amazing that we could never forget it, we still do. And it’s amazing how easily we do so. Life throws so much at us that the lessons of Sunday get drowned out by midweek. The presence of God gets lost amidst the traffic, the deadlines, and even the busy-ness that is supposedly our leisure time.

Yet even when we forget about God’s love, God has not forgotten us. The table remains there, an enduring reminder and resource to us of God’s grace and loving-kindness. We can come back to it each week, just as God waits for us to return to him each day.

Sometimes, though, God’s love seems unfathomable. Not only because God is so much bigger than we can conceive, but also because we are so small, so fragile, so seemingly unimportant in the world. How could the God who draws the stars together into galaxies, puts them in their places and then sets them spinning across the universe, how could this God possibly see us, much less care for us? Besides, how could God even have time for us?

Again, the table is our sign that it is all true. God dwelt among us, experienced our existence for himself, and is intimately concerned with our well-being. At the same time, God does not demand that we understand before we partake of the communion. Jesus’ command is “eat, drink”; we gain understanding by coming to the table, not vice versa.

There is a love that knows no limits;
It is not bound by what we see.
There is a hope that is eternal,
Able to meet the deepest need.
Though the world may try to convince us
That Christ could never be enough,
Where there are hearts that have been broken,
There is a love!

May we trust in this love and carry it into the world, that all may know Christ’s healing touch. Amen.

I’ve been reading Kenneth Lincoln’s Native American Renaissance, an important early study of 20th century Native American literature. But when Lincoln describes the Native American view of poetry as being a witness to a pre-existing song (as opposed to European notions of creation and ordering), I thought of our lives as Christians. God has been singing his song for thousands of years. We are simply empty vessels through which the song resonates — living flutes, as it were. Our lives are not so much what we make of them as what we allow of God’s song to blow through us.

It’s calmly reassuring to me to think about my work this way. My research and dissertation are already existing in God’s mind — they are part of the song God has been singing for centuries. I am not responsible for creating the song. I am only responsible to transmit it faithfully, to witness to what God is doing in the world.

May I be a faithful singer of this glorious song. Amen.

(I usually write things here and then post them on GCN, but this time I worked in reverse — I guess it’s easier for me to come up with ideas by responding to other people….)

I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot lately, as my life is completely up in the air and almost completely out of my control for the next few months (academic job searching — God is in control and that’s all I have to work with).

I don’t own my life. I have no rights to it. I didn’t create myself, nor do I have some kind of independent existence outside of the world.

No, I am here only because God created me, knitting me together in the womb. I am not even the result of biological chance (sperm gets lucky, etc.). Instead, I am wonderfully and fearfully made, crafted by the God who creates all that exists, visible and invisible.

But I am made with a purpose. My life isn’t really mine to decide what to do with. My life is a gift in that God chose to give it to me. But it also a gift in that I did nothing to deserve it. If I am to use the gift in the manner it was meant, I must allow God to instruct me in the ways I should go.

I want to be God’s. Wholly God’s. To serve no other master but the Lord of Love and Prince of Peace. I want to be an instrument of God’s reconciling and healing presence in the world. I want to draw people closer to Christ, to help them walk by the Spirit of Christ, that they may truly be brothers and sisters of Christ. This is the calling for which I (we) have been made.

*******
The more I contemplate our life in Christ, the more I realize that Western culture has been way off the mark for the past 350 years — all thanks to the predominance of ontological individualism (look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!).

We have been brought up to believe that we exist as individuals, that we have inalienable rights as individuals, that our existence has some sort of stability outside of the world, outside of our communities, even outside of God.

What if all of this is wrong? What if the entire foundation of modern Western culture is a falsehood?

What would happen if we, as the Church, truly stressed our created-ness and rejected the claims of ontological individualism? What would happen if we gave up our claims on ourselves and acknowledged a radical dependency upon God, for our every breath and our every thought?

How would our lives change? What would we have to give up? What would have to take on? Where would we come into conflict with the world around us?

Our lives are not our own.
Thanks be to God!

comment

One of the discussions at GCN has brought up the issue of boredom and which responses are inappropriate for Christians. When we’re bored, we fall into all kinds of traps: some people eat when bored, some watch junky TV, some smoke, drink, look at porn, etc.–a whole range of responses from the seemingly banal to the spiritually risky. The question revolves around which responses will interfere with our relationship with God.

It occurs to me now that perhaps none of these responses are truly banal; that is, they are all spiritually risky. For, even though we may feel that we have nothing to do with our time, God has plenty of projects for us, some internal, some external. We always have something more to learn, something to work on, an attitude that needs to be adjusted, a habit that needs to be broken. We will spend the rest of our lives maturing in Christ.

There is no reason for us to be bored; God always has a long list of things for us to do. May we be more diligent to give God the attention he deserves. Amen.

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This weekend I had to renew and upgrade my Internet security program, a seemingly simple task which required several hours of downloading, installing, uninstalling, redownloading, etc. At the end of it, I was told to run a full system scan. Which took so long that I had to cancel it twice before finally letting it run while I went to my office for the day.

I don’t know if the scan was slower than normal, but as I watched the number of scanned files slowly increase, I couldn’t believe my simple laptop could even hold that many files. Good grief–how complicated this machine is!

I then realized how small my laptop, with all its files, is compared to the majesty and intricacy of the universe. And yet God is able to scan the remotest reaches in less than the blink of an eye. God sees it all, knows all that is going on, down to the subatomic level.

How is this possible? And how could God, with so much to watch and care for, even notice us?

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained…” (Ps. 8.3).

How majestic is God’s name, now and forevermore. All honor and praise and glory be to God, the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of the Universe!

Amen!

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My online friend Neil Ellis Orts wrote this funny (but not untrue) piece on Christian jewelry:

Graves Creations: Bringing the Cross into the 21st Century

Enjoy!

This life is not mine.
This body is not mine.
This mind is not mine.
These talents are not mine.
This family and these friends are not mine.

There is nothing I can lay claim to as my own:

How then shall I live?

No, I’m not directly referring either to Terry McMillan’s 1992 novel or to the 1995 movie with Angela Bassett and Whitney Huston. But I do think of that movie every time I have the experience, and it was the phrase itself that made me notice the actual phenomenon.

Hunh? What?

Sorry, didn’t mean to lose you. (Can’t you all read my mind???)

Every once in a while, when I’m stressed, I realize that I am holding my breath. More accurately, I am waiting to exhale, as though a full tank of air in my lungs will make whatever problem I’m facing dissipate into harmlessness.

As a trained singer and sometime actor, I’m aware that we do better the more smoothly we breathe. The breath not only supports our voices, but helps us temper our emotional reactions. As William James noted, sometimes (if not all the time), our emotions stem from physical reactions we have to events, rather than vice versa. So when I should be focusing most on breathing in and out as a way of relieving stress, I am only making it worse by creating the physical condition that leads to emotional tension.

From a spiritual standpoint, the experience is similar to the one I referred to earlier about walking, namely, how easy it is for us not to entrust ourselves to the ground as we walk. It is strong enough to hold us without breaking, while its inertia enables us to propel ourselves forward, backward, or even up in the air (should we so choose). And I wonder if our walking patterns reflect our faith in God’s ability to care for us.

The same with breathing. I have to remind myself that there will always be enough air. I do not have to fight to get enough breath. Even when I’m singing, I know that if I will relax, there will be enough air to get me through the phrase. But this is never my first reaction; I have to work to trust in what should be automatic.

God promises to be like that — to provide for all that we need, simply out of love for us. Yet we continue to strive after all those things God is willing to give us. We continue to work to earn a love that God has already given us. We continue to believe that we must earn what is already ours through Grace.

Breathe in, breathe out. There. Enough breath. No matter how tight things get, there is enough air. And there is enough God.

Amen, and amen.

The conventional wisdom is wrong: walking is not a continuous falling motion. Rather, it is a pulling motion, in which the muscles of the legs pull the rest of the body forward using the ground for leverage.

I am reminded of this each morning as I walk the hill just outside my apartment. If I rely on the falling motion to propel myself, I get shin splints and soon become out of breath. But if I adjust the way I walk so that my legs do all the work, I can climb the hill with much less exertion, and with no pain and no shortness of breath.

We humans are funny when we walk. Some people (like myself) tend to clomp the ground when we walk, slamming the entire sole of our foot into the earth with each step, as though we have to propel ourselves through our own strength. Others of us slide across the ground, gingerly setting our toes down first, as though the ground is fragile and might break under the force of our steps.

But the natural way of walking is to allow the foot to roll–heel to toe–with each step, trusting that the ground will be there to support us, and that we can use the ground’s inertia to do the work of propelling us forward.

It is an act of faith, a belief and active trust that the ground will be solid enough to support us and to carry us forward. We do not have to do all the work, for the ground will be our strength. Nor do we have to be cautious, for the ground will be strong enough to hold us up.

It’s a lot like the way we walk in faith, no?

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Entries may come farther apart for a while, as school picks back up. But every semester is another chance for me to dedicate myself to God by trying to do all that I do–every course I teach or take, every paper I write or grade–for God’s sake rather than for the degree or the job or etc. May I do my work for the sake of the Creator, and may I trust that He will provide all that I need to fulfill His call.

Work is hard for us to devote to God, isn’t it? We often feel that work pulls us away from our “true” calling–our work in the church or in our families or in our communities. But work is just as much a part of our calling as all these other things, and needs to be devoted back to God just as much as they do. From a biblical perspective, work is given to us by God before the fall (Gen. 2.15), and while we may be cursed to sweat in our work, the work itself can still be used by God for His glory.

I fear that many of us connect our jobs with our paychecks–we work because we have to provide for our needs (and for those of our families). But this is not correct. More accurately, God provides all those things for us, although He may use our paychecks as the means to do so. Still, it is God who provides, not the job, not the boss, not the company. Work becomes an idol in the worst sense–the idol who enslaves us and from whom we dare not break free. This should not be so.

Let us then devote our jobs, our careers, our toil and sweat, to the God who gave us work to do because it was good in His sight. Let us dedicate our every task to God, and trust that everything we need will be provided for us in the meantime.

Amen, and amen.

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While walking to campus today, I was reminded of the concept of Between, one of the most difficult challenges we face in our Christian walk. It’s easy enough (relatively speaking) for us to think about our duties, our jobs, our home lives, etc., in terms of our calling in Christ. But what about all the times we spend between those places? What do we do with the time we spend commuting to places, or walking to and from the parking lot, or waiting for an appointment?

There’s no one answer, of course. There are many constructive ways to handle the between times. After all, God is a creative God and has created us with the freedom to create new ways to worship and serve him.

For instance, between-time can be a good time to practice centered motion. We’ve all heard about centering prayer, but too often the notion of centering assumes that we will be stationary. This makes sense, but we don’t live stationary lives. We need to learn how to carry our stationary centering into our activities. The old metaphor of the spiritual life is to keep one eye on God and the other on the world. As such writers as Catherine of Genoa, Brother Lawrence and Thomas Kelly have described it, we move through all of our activities with an active awareness of God’s presence and guidance.

Between-time can also be a time to look at the world for examples of God’s glory. The animals finding their food already provided for them. The tree limbs reaching up to heaven as if in prayer. The flowers revealing their pre-designed glory. The clouds drifting along the invisible currents of the wind. The sun that shines on the good and the wicked alike. The ground that will always be strong enough to support us, no matter how weak we are. The natural world is full of analogs for faith and worship.

But today, I was reminded of another use of between-time: intercessory prayer. As Eugene Peterson has put it, we must pray for every person we meet. As we spend our time between places and between events, we pay attention to what we see and hear around us. We overhear snippets of conversation or see people in need of help (the car on the side of the road, the homeless person asleep on the sidewalk). We recognize that all of us here on earth are going through the craziness of life together–and we’re all making it up as we go along. We are all struggling–to make good decisions, to hold ourselves together, to get through the day. For each of these people, we can pray.

Between is one of the hardest places to be, because there is no “there” there. But when we consider how much of our lives we spend Between, we realize how important it is for us to abide in that space, worshiping God and loving our neighbors. Amen, and amen.

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WOW. And, Ouch!

Cenk Uygur’s column at HuffPo, and especially the comments that follow, reveal the kind of anti-religion bias that I hear about from right-wing commentators but never believed really existed.

Mr. Uygur is worried that 25% of the nation believes that Jesus will return in 2007, a statistic which reflects both the popularity of “Left Behind” type Christianity and a general pessimism amongst conservative Christians about the world situation. Now, even from a Christian perspective, I understand some of his concern. In all probability, many of these same people have expected Jesus to come back every year for some time now — we do always assume things can’t get any worse than they already are, no? And there is reason to be concerned about the rhetoric (not to mention the theology) coming out of the end-times camps.

But Mr. Uygur apparently believes that these 25% represent all Christians. Moving beyond the qualifier that Jesus will return in 2007, he broadens his attack to the idea of Christ returning at all:

“You people are seriously disturbed. You think a magic man is going to appear out of the sky and grant you eternal bliss. If the man’s name was anything other than Jesus, that belief would get you locked up as a psychotic. And the fact that you have given him this magic name and decided to call him your Lord doesn’t make it any more sane.”

And the people who replied to his post are even more vocally anti-religion.

So what about those of us who trust in the return of Christ, but who have no expectation that he will be returning this year? What about those of us who believe Christ might not return for another 50 centuries? Are we certifiably nuts too?

And what about those of us who disagree with Mr. Uygur’s presentation of Christian eschatology as found in in the quote above? What if we don’t believe that Christ is coming simply to help us escape into eternal bliss, but to be a righteous judge, a ruler who will establish peace and justice on the earth? What if Christ is going to return in order to set right all the things that liberals like Mr. Uygur see as wrong in the world: oppression, lack of compassion, mistreatment, inequality, etc.?

And what about those of us who believe that Christ will return to do all this, but also believe that it is our responsibility as bearers of Christ to work toward those goals now and with all our might? Are we nuts too?

I understand Mr. Uygur’s frustration. I too am bothered by this type of Christianity. And I tell myself, perhaps too easily, that what Mr. Uygur and his readers are reacting against is not really Christianity at all, but an American religion that has only tangential connections to Christianity.

But I worry that the truth is more difficult to chew: What if this is the only Christianity that people like Mr. Uygur see? What if they never see people living out the commands of Jesus to love our neighbors as ourselves, not to return evil for evil, to lay down our lives for others?

What if Mr. Uygur’s mis-characterization of the church is closer to the reality of the situation than the gospels’ depiction of the church?

And what can we do in 2007 to give Mr. Uygur and his readers a better picture of Christianity? Or of religion in general?

Still wrestling with distractions, even though school is out for the term. Can these distractions be redeemed? Can God (or, will God) find a way to use them to further the growth of the kingdom here on earth?

The simplicity of Christianity is its difficulty. The world is not evil. Humanity is the pinnacle of creation. Our abilities to know and to create are part of being in the image of God, and they are part of our calling as Christians. There are so many things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellent and worthy of praise (Phil. 4.8). There are so many things in our culture that are worth examining, pondering, even (gasp) enjoying.

Can these distractions be healthy? Can they become healthy? Can they find use in service to the Love of God and neighbor? Can I learn from them how the world operates, what its problems are, what people need? So much loss, so much desperation, so much fear–this I learn from TV, from movies, from surfing the web. So much vanity, so much extravagance, so much chasing after wind. This too I learn.

Focus one eye on God, and the other on the world. See God moving in the world. See people moving apart from God. See and trust and love.

Unworthiness. Always to remember that I am a creature–created. My life is not mine; I do not own it, much less did I create myself. I am not a pre-existent being, but a creation, crafted in love and gifted with life. For it is a gift, not something I deserve but something I have been freely given from the One who loves humanity.

I must keep in mind that this life is not mine to control, but a privilege and a responsibility. I must keep my eye on God and maintain my focus on God’s purposes for my life–I must decrease that Christ might increase. If I am to be great in the Kingdom, I must be least in the world. What does God want of me? How am I to spend my days in ways that serve God’s love? Discipline, self-control: remember God’s presence and do not be sidetracked by the noise of the world. Like athletes in training–tune out the distractions.

God loves us, but how poorly we repay God for the gifts. How easily we shirk our calling. How weakly we pursue God’s purposes. How selfishly we hog God’s love for ourselves. How half-hearted. How easily frustrated. How lazy. How unworthy.

How much we need God’s grace.

The site instructs me to write a first blog entry that will impress. I hope I never fall into that trap. Isn’t that exactly the problem with Christianity today? We think we need to impress. But that’s not how the kingdom of God operates. That’s how the world operates, and we’ve bought into the world’s methods–again. God’s kingdom works slowly and in the most mundane ways. Impressing isn’t godly. But perhaps meditation is. Reflection. Self-examination. Deliberation.

Anyway, I hope I don’t impress, per se. But I do hope that some of the thoughts rattling around in my head will help someone somewhere draw closer to the Source of all Life. That would be impressive, wouldn’t it?