This first week of Advent at Skyline, my days were filled with a mixed bag of prayers, a hospital visit, scripture study, several meetings and calls to members and friends of the church and another pastor, as well as a negotiation with a contractor for tree removal and some slight assistance for the repair of our boiler. After Sunday's miraculous worship filled with baptism, music and celebration, the days of the rest of the week have been a decided mix of the mundane and routine by comparison.
A pastor and member of St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Wilmington have invited me to participate in their series of Lenten reflections next Spring, entitled "God's Inclusive Love: No Limits" primarily because they had heard of our decision to welcome LGBT persons with open arms at Skyline. Our conversation has become a time of reflection for me of the cost and the blessing of following One who calls us to bear a cross for love of the world. I have especially been drawn to the many stories of refugees from the war of hatred and exclusion who have been drawn to our community of faith, and who have transformed both our community and our experience of God's love and grace.
My favorite statements include one who celebrated the community "saving his life", another who shared that our community had revived her nearly extinguished hope that she could love Jesus among a community of people who loved Jesus - and who loved her. When I am troubled by the thoughts of the cost of our discipleship, I remember those who had given up on the church and who came to experience God again among us. Several Sundays ago, a friend put his arm around me, looked back into the sanctuary full of followers of Jesus and said: "They won't let God die, will they?!"
This is Skyline. Where the light of God's hope dawns.
We met with a truncated Staff Parish Relations Committee Tuesday evening to draft a Profile of our church for the Bishop and Cabinet to review as they consider whom to appoint as pastor of Skyline in July 2010 (for the past 13 years, the Bishop has appointed Vicki and me to serve for another year here). We prepare the Profile every year, and this year we celebrated some miraculous ministries, hopes, and descriptions of the people God has gathered into a church called Skyline.
What are the ministries we celebrate here and hope to expand?
Contemporary, experiential worship services; diverse music ministry; outreach to unchurched people in a postmodern context; children’s ministry that celebrates the presence and participation of children in worship and in the life of the church
We hope to expand our outreach to all persons seeking a deeper relationship with God, especially those who are marginalized in society and in the church; youth ministry in and beyond the church; and serving as the “town center” for the community of Pike Creek.
what are the short-term ministry goals at Skyline: (1) Youth Skate Park; (2) Outreach and Advocacy Ministry for Justice Issues in our Community; (3) Volunteer Center for Missions; (4) Mentoring ministry for at-risk youth; (5) Wellness Center for spiritual and physical health; (6) Alternative Worship in an emergent/post-modern style and setting.
What are the pastoral characteristics most helpful in Skyline's ministry?
Flexibility, delegation, and empowerment of lay partners in creating experiential, contemporary worship; openness to receive Christians who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered as full members of the church; ability to nurture all members toward expressing God’s calling in their lives in and beyond the church; embracing shared ministry with laity, in a church that celebrates the dispersion of power and initiative.
On Wednesday evening, I gathered with the the choir to rehearse a song they will sing during our Festival of Light concert next Saturday, Dec. 12 at Skyline. After sharing and celebrating our joys and concerns in prayer, we sang a celebration not only of the birth of the Christ child at Christmas, but in every heart and in every moment of our lives. We sing in the hope that our song will bring God glory and draw especially those people who have given up on hope.
This is Skyline. Where the light of God's hope dawns.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Yeasty Living
I'm thinking about yeast, and how it makes or breaks the breadmaking process. (Of course, I have other things in mind besides breadmaking.) Get a bad batch of yeast, and you're looking at a ruined, sagging loaf of worthless sludge. Put too much fresh yeast in a loaf, and the bread will explode (and sometimes, this isn't funny at all). And the most insidious part of this story is that you cannot know what you've done until it's too late to do anything about. There's no feedback until the end - the whole process is built on faith and experience.
So much of breadmaking - and baking in general - involves a bit of flying blind. The muck you've got when you prayerfully place the goods in the oven cannot be even remotely related to the product you're hoping for is the magic works as promised (like it did for Mom when you were wholly unconcerned about whether or not magic worked - because you took for granted that it simply and always did). And even though baking is a science - pure chemistry - there are many ways for the batch of gook to go south on you when it gets too hot in the kitchen.
So we're always a bit surprised when it all comes out well, and no one more than the cook, who would prefer the rest of us enjoy the feast in blissful ignorance of the measure of anxiety that forms the part of all but the simplest recipes. Farmers probably share this kind of anxiety during the growing season - or perhaps it never lets up for them from seed to market. Yet they plant.
To live in this kind of realm is to never be free of the necessity of flying blind, of faithfuly planting that which we cannot see but for eyes of faith. And the connection happens often enough that we continue to plant and to knead and to mix the ingredients in the ways that have been gracefully handed down to us. We will hand these ways down to our children, it goes without saying. The holy books in our kitchens explode after generations until interrupted by indifference and the lack of time to have faith in a process you cannot control.
Those who continue to hold to these practices infiltrate the earthly family with the yeast of our fierce hopefulness. Thankfully, it doesn't take much to expand and rise the whole of the earth in faith, hope and love. We remain fresh and waiting for the baker woman to knead us into the measures of flour and dough. We do what we do. Spread throughout the whole in the quiet, determined way the woman's strong fingers find every yeastless place with careful precision. Later, when the heat is on, we will expand, and the gooey mass will rise - nearly imperceptibly at first, but later unmistakably and ubiquitously.
Inevitably.
So much of breadmaking - and baking in general - involves a bit of flying blind. The muck you've got when you prayerfully place the goods in the oven cannot be even remotely related to the product you're hoping for is the magic works as promised (like it did for Mom when you were wholly unconcerned about whether or not magic worked - because you took for granted that it simply and always did). And even though baking is a science - pure chemistry - there are many ways for the batch of gook to go south on you when it gets too hot in the kitchen.
So we're always a bit surprised when it all comes out well, and no one more than the cook, who would prefer the rest of us enjoy the feast in blissful ignorance of the measure of anxiety that forms the part of all but the simplest recipes. Farmers probably share this kind of anxiety during the growing season - or perhaps it never lets up for them from seed to market. Yet they plant.
To live in this kind of realm is to never be free of the necessity of flying blind, of faithfuly planting that which we cannot see but for eyes of faith. And the connection happens often enough that we continue to plant and to knead and to mix the ingredients in the ways that have been gracefully handed down to us. We will hand these ways down to our children, it goes without saying. The holy books in our kitchens explode after generations until interrupted by indifference and the lack of time to have faith in a process you cannot control.
Those who continue to hold to these practices infiltrate the earthly family with the yeast of our fierce hopefulness. Thankfully, it doesn't take much to expand and rise the whole of the earth in faith, hope and love. We remain fresh and waiting for the baker woman to knead us into the measures of flour and dough. We do what we do. Spread throughout the whole in the quiet, determined way the woman's strong fingers find every yeastless place with careful precision. Later, when the heat is on, we will expand, and the gooey mass will rise - nearly imperceptibly at first, but later unmistakably and ubiquitously.
Inevitably.
Monday, November 9, 2009
The Light that Shines on our Functional Atheism
November 11, 2009
I’ve been reading and thinking a great deal lately about how we go about thinking theologically in the church and the way we live out our theology in the church community. More and more as a pastor, I’ve become aware of the horrible tensions between what we say and what we do because, as a “company man”, the institution of the church requires my absolute allegiance to theological formulations I am acutely aware the church neither believes nor lives out in our daily life. And as a Christ follower committed to the Truth, Life, and Way of Jesus, I find it increasingly unbearable to live as a pastor as if this tension does not exist.
In other places, I have called this exploration a “Quest”, and wondered whether or not the motivation for such a quest comes from merely selfish or more altruistic intentions. But increasingly I sense that my position in the church as a pastor places a heavy responsibility on me to speak not only for myself but for the communion of the saints, living and ancestral. And it is in this communion of faith where I sense the gulf between our creedal statements of faith and our practical understanding of God and way of life devoted to God and to each other, particularly as we understand that way of life as the one we call Messiah lived it.
I see this gulf everywhere in the life of the church. Social researchers have long exposed the lack of any significant social distinction between Christians, in particular, and other communities of human beings, though there are many notable individual exceptions, and perhaps a few communal exceptions, like the Mennonite and Amish communities of faith. But what I have observed as pastor runs far deeper than these social manifestations of Christian faith. Parker Palmer has called the way Christians approach God in postmodern life “functional atheism”, a term that describes the theology of a people who live as if God makes no real claim on their lives (Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Jossey-Bass, 1999).
Functional atheism manifests in ways that go far beyond holiness or righteous living. As a pastor, I have lamented not only the profound level of scriptural illiteracy in the Christian church, but also the many ways in which sociological realities and concerns trump any real form of theological struggle among those of us who claim to follow Christ. The reason we do not know how to engage in theological discernment stems in large measure not from apathy or ignorance, but from our very real fear of where such discernment might lead us.
Lay persons abdicate all responsibility for theological reflection to the clergy (only performed after the fact, if at all, in order to justify our preconceived notions and ideology). And if they disagree with the clergy, they simply find a pastor who espouses a theology more conducive to their way of thinking, rather than engaging the offending pastor in a dialogue that could be fruitful or transformative for the relationship. Clergy are only too happy to accept this no-contest plea from laity, at least until we realize the tyranny of popularism requires us to seek not the truth but a justification of the current social reality.
As a backdrop to this morbid dance, we idolize some imaginary divine ally who puts paid to all who argue against us – not that we would actually have to live by any of our arguments, but so that we might be vindicated among those who cannot see the world as we do. And since we know that such an idol is but a fantasy, and all we hear conclusively from heaven is silence, we conclude that there is no God but our own power to have our way in this world – be it the power to persuade, dismiss, or dominate.
And since the “real” God will do none of these things, we quite consciously overthrow God (who at any rate allows this overthrow without protest) and live as if God were not a part of human existence even and perhaps especially in the church. (I say especially because the church places such a relentless value on articulation.) We prefer this rebellion and idolatry to the intolerability of a silent and apparently impotent deity – yet for some reason our makeup requires that we maintain a façade of faith in such a deity, at least in ceremonial form. I cannot fathom for whom we play this religious act – unless we put it on for ourselves.
Here is the grand lie and its rationale: we need it in order to anesthetize the pain of the nihilistic reality of our Faustian bargain. We leap from the searing frying pan of a God who leaves us entirely alone into the consuming fire of utter separation and meaninglessness. And who wants to face up to such a brutal reality? So we speak on God’s behalf, as infallible holy persons who know the secrets of the infallible holy books, in order to pierce the deafening silence from the deep wells of our souls, where no one remembers how to seek a God we have ceased to hope might be found.
The key to our lust for unchanging Truth lies not in its infallibility but that it lies within our grasp – that we can know and claim such Truth – about God or ourselves. We will trade anything for the existential comfort that comes with certainty – even God and whatever we mean by freedom or justice – or even life itself (in all its abundance, whatever that means). We who claim allegiance to the Christ idea appreciate the incarnation (how conveniently articulate) but not the enigmatic Rabbi Yeshuach who even now refuses to be comprehended or claimed by any of his disciples. Dostoyevsky speaks for all of us in the dungeons of the Inquisition: “Go away, or we will kill you again.”
Yet incomprehensibly, he refuses to die.
Of course I would pin the blame (or credit) for the persistent awareness of the gulf between what we say and do as Christians on our namesake – even though we have transformed his name into a hope. He speaks as one with authority, not necessarily because he has “descended” from “heaven” but because he relentlessly lives into the promise of a realm of truth and life which claims us but which none of us can claim. Like a bull in a China shop, he tramples conventional ways of making peace with hopelessness and of sleeping with the enemy, regardless of the consequences for himself or for anyone who dares to come along for the ride. Because he has not come to bring peace.
The stories told with voice and ink and blood convey a sense of passionate identity that refused to rely on any of the conventional ways in which human beings typically seek meaning. Like his mentor, John, Yeshuach lived a wild and untamed life to its violent (tragic? Or inevitable?) end, and promised to accompany anyone with the chutzpah to leap into this passionate whirlwind of reckless, angry love. He also promised pain, injustice, and enslavement to a fearful path of destiny beyond ourselves.
How we have tamed him – mocked his euangelion and the martyrs of his Way, of whom the world was not worthy – and killed him endlessly on the cross of our comfortable, controllable “faith”.
But how else could we have created a powerful, popular faith expression in the world? After only a mere three centuries of sporadic debate about whether or not cowardice and apostasy negated discipleship, the young church was more than ready for the killing embrace of the Emperor – the true (or at least realistic) god of all gods. How much more efficient could be our penetration into heathen lands and peoples who would inevitably fall beneath the boot of raw power. And once we had sealed our pact with power, it would cease to matter with whom we allied ourselves. Any rabid, effective dog would do. Power and infallibility would come to justify any means toward the end of “saving” the world from ambiguity and the maddening call of a crucified “lord” to empty ourselves for others.
We believe in God the Father Almighty…
And yet… and yet. Like sand agitating relentlessly within an oyster, the life of a savior who suffered in life and in death refuses to bow to the idol we have fashioned of steel, silicone and weapons grade plutonium. He mocks our houses of worship where we insulate ourselves from suffering and ruthlessly enforce a homogenous form of faith in ourselves. The revolutionary rabbi taunts us as we read (while anxiously watering down) the incendiary stories his early followers called euangelion. We would mob and carry him to the brow of a cliff and toss him to his death to shut him up if we could only get our hands on him – yet he passes through us like a draft, the source of which we dare not discover – because we know his breathing on us keeps us alive in this coma in which we have learned to settle.
…the resurrection of the body…
How persistently he called to his rotting friend, after days of comforting rest from the labor that is life. Did he weep because he can never leave us alone? Because he knows he bids us to die again and again? We sleep while he prays, sweating blood as he wrestles with the silent God who places relentlessly before us the cup of sorrows. Yet every time we gather to break and bless and chew and swallow we are remembered into his body, forever broken and spilled out. Every time we rehearse the ancient stories, a fire kindles and then rages within us that wearies and overcomes our attempts to hold it in.
Our darkness cannot comprehend such light. We cannot know, even dimly. But perhaps it is enough to know that we are known. Enough to be overwhelmed by love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Our theology and our sociology can be far more tentative – more awestruck by the sense of the realm of love that never – never fails. Perhaps this, finally, is the measure of life in all its abundance – to live beyond either questions or answers about the nature of God or humanity, embracing love that never fails in every moment of our lives, fearlessly, relentlessly, even recklessly, in the wake of a savior who beckons us to suffer together for love without end.
…and the life everlasting.
I’ve been reading and thinking a great deal lately about how we go about thinking theologically in the church and the way we live out our theology in the church community. More and more as a pastor, I’ve become aware of the horrible tensions between what we say and what we do because, as a “company man”, the institution of the church requires my absolute allegiance to theological formulations I am acutely aware the church neither believes nor lives out in our daily life. And as a Christ follower committed to the Truth, Life, and Way of Jesus, I find it increasingly unbearable to live as a pastor as if this tension does not exist.
In other places, I have called this exploration a “Quest”, and wondered whether or not the motivation for such a quest comes from merely selfish or more altruistic intentions. But increasingly I sense that my position in the church as a pastor places a heavy responsibility on me to speak not only for myself but for the communion of the saints, living and ancestral. And it is in this communion of faith where I sense the gulf between our creedal statements of faith and our practical understanding of God and way of life devoted to God and to each other, particularly as we understand that way of life as the one we call Messiah lived it.
I see this gulf everywhere in the life of the church. Social researchers have long exposed the lack of any significant social distinction between Christians, in particular, and other communities of human beings, though there are many notable individual exceptions, and perhaps a few communal exceptions, like the Mennonite and Amish communities of faith. But what I have observed as pastor runs far deeper than these social manifestations of Christian faith. Parker Palmer has called the way Christians approach God in postmodern life “functional atheism”, a term that describes the theology of a people who live as if God makes no real claim on their lives (Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Jossey-Bass, 1999).
Functional atheism manifests in ways that go far beyond holiness or righteous living. As a pastor, I have lamented not only the profound level of scriptural illiteracy in the Christian church, but also the many ways in which sociological realities and concerns trump any real form of theological struggle among those of us who claim to follow Christ. The reason we do not know how to engage in theological discernment stems in large measure not from apathy or ignorance, but from our very real fear of where such discernment might lead us.
Lay persons abdicate all responsibility for theological reflection to the clergy (only performed after the fact, if at all, in order to justify our preconceived notions and ideology). And if they disagree with the clergy, they simply find a pastor who espouses a theology more conducive to their way of thinking, rather than engaging the offending pastor in a dialogue that could be fruitful or transformative for the relationship. Clergy are only too happy to accept this no-contest plea from laity, at least until we realize the tyranny of popularism requires us to seek not the truth but a justification of the current social reality.
As a backdrop to this morbid dance, we idolize some imaginary divine ally who puts paid to all who argue against us – not that we would actually have to live by any of our arguments, but so that we might be vindicated among those who cannot see the world as we do. And since we know that such an idol is but a fantasy, and all we hear conclusively from heaven is silence, we conclude that there is no God but our own power to have our way in this world – be it the power to persuade, dismiss, or dominate.
And since the “real” God will do none of these things, we quite consciously overthrow God (who at any rate allows this overthrow without protest) and live as if God were not a part of human existence even and perhaps especially in the church. (I say especially because the church places such a relentless value on articulation.) We prefer this rebellion and idolatry to the intolerability of a silent and apparently impotent deity – yet for some reason our makeup requires that we maintain a façade of faith in such a deity, at least in ceremonial form. I cannot fathom for whom we play this religious act – unless we put it on for ourselves.
Here is the grand lie and its rationale: we need it in order to anesthetize the pain of the nihilistic reality of our Faustian bargain. We leap from the searing frying pan of a God who leaves us entirely alone into the consuming fire of utter separation and meaninglessness. And who wants to face up to such a brutal reality? So we speak on God’s behalf, as infallible holy persons who know the secrets of the infallible holy books, in order to pierce the deafening silence from the deep wells of our souls, where no one remembers how to seek a God we have ceased to hope might be found.
The key to our lust for unchanging Truth lies not in its infallibility but that it lies within our grasp – that we can know and claim such Truth – about God or ourselves. We will trade anything for the existential comfort that comes with certainty – even God and whatever we mean by freedom or justice – or even life itself (in all its abundance, whatever that means). We who claim allegiance to the Christ idea appreciate the incarnation (how conveniently articulate) but not the enigmatic Rabbi Yeshuach who even now refuses to be comprehended or claimed by any of his disciples. Dostoyevsky speaks for all of us in the dungeons of the Inquisition: “Go away, or we will kill you again.”
Yet incomprehensibly, he refuses to die.
Of course I would pin the blame (or credit) for the persistent awareness of the gulf between what we say and do as Christians on our namesake – even though we have transformed his name into a hope. He speaks as one with authority, not necessarily because he has “descended” from “heaven” but because he relentlessly lives into the promise of a realm of truth and life which claims us but which none of us can claim. Like a bull in a China shop, he tramples conventional ways of making peace with hopelessness and of sleeping with the enemy, regardless of the consequences for himself or for anyone who dares to come along for the ride. Because he has not come to bring peace.
The stories told with voice and ink and blood convey a sense of passionate identity that refused to rely on any of the conventional ways in which human beings typically seek meaning. Like his mentor, John, Yeshuach lived a wild and untamed life to its violent (tragic? Or inevitable?) end, and promised to accompany anyone with the chutzpah to leap into this passionate whirlwind of reckless, angry love. He also promised pain, injustice, and enslavement to a fearful path of destiny beyond ourselves.
How we have tamed him – mocked his euangelion and the martyrs of his Way, of whom the world was not worthy – and killed him endlessly on the cross of our comfortable, controllable “faith”.
But how else could we have created a powerful, popular faith expression in the world? After only a mere three centuries of sporadic debate about whether or not cowardice and apostasy negated discipleship, the young church was more than ready for the killing embrace of the Emperor – the true (or at least realistic) god of all gods. How much more efficient could be our penetration into heathen lands and peoples who would inevitably fall beneath the boot of raw power. And once we had sealed our pact with power, it would cease to matter with whom we allied ourselves. Any rabid, effective dog would do. Power and infallibility would come to justify any means toward the end of “saving” the world from ambiguity and the maddening call of a crucified “lord” to empty ourselves for others.
We believe in God the Father Almighty…
And yet… and yet. Like sand agitating relentlessly within an oyster, the life of a savior who suffered in life and in death refuses to bow to the idol we have fashioned of steel, silicone and weapons grade plutonium. He mocks our houses of worship where we insulate ourselves from suffering and ruthlessly enforce a homogenous form of faith in ourselves. The revolutionary rabbi taunts us as we read (while anxiously watering down) the incendiary stories his early followers called euangelion. We would mob and carry him to the brow of a cliff and toss him to his death to shut him up if we could only get our hands on him – yet he passes through us like a draft, the source of which we dare not discover – because we know his breathing on us keeps us alive in this coma in which we have learned to settle.
…the resurrection of the body…
How persistently he called to his rotting friend, after days of comforting rest from the labor that is life. Did he weep because he can never leave us alone? Because he knows he bids us to die again and again? We sleep while he prays, sweating blood as he wrestles with the silent God who places relentlessly before us the cup of sorrows. Yet every time we gather to break and bless and chew and swallow we are remembered into his body, forever broken and spilled out. Every time we rehearse the ancient stories, a fire kindles and then rages within us that wearies and overcomes our attempts to hold it in.
Our darkness cannot comprehend such light. We cannot know, even dimly. But perhaps it is enough to know that we are known. Enough to be overwhelmed by love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Our theology and our sociology can be far more tentative – more awestruck by the sense of the realm of love that never – never fails. Perhaps this, finally, is the measure of life in all its abundance – to live beyond either questions or answers about the nature of God or humanity, embracing love that never fails in every moment of our lives, fearlessly, relentlessly, even recklessly, in the wake of a savior who beckons us to suffer together for love without end.
…and the life everlasting.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Bonhoeffer's New Wine
I need to say more about Nashville, and what happened when I rubbed shoulders in a great cloud of witnesses whose love reminded me who God calls me to be. We become who we are created to be only in companionship with others who push us, hold us and release us in the dynamic kind of interpretive, improvisational dance of our lives. And I don't much care if that dancing metaphor sounds overly dramatic - human life is dramatic and miraculous, even as it can also be mundane and heartbreaking.
One of the speakers at Nashville invited us to take another look at Bonhoeffer's "Life Together". As I began to read this fascinating journal of a triumphant community of resistance to the monstrous hatred of Hitler's Germany, I was struck first by Bonhoeffer's invitation to recognize my own community of faith - the people who gather as Skyline - for the miracle God has created us to be for each other and for our neighbors.
Bonhoeffer writes that the kind of gratefulness a prisoner feels for a visitor who brings encouragement into darkness can multiply a thousand times over when we are surrounded by pilgrims on the journey of faith. But we often take each other for granted, of course, precisely because we are surrounded by an embarrassment of riches.
I remembered the way I used to feel so isolated as a Christ-follower and officer aboard USS Bunker Hill, in the vastness of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. When I would gather with a few others to pray or to read the scriptures together, I would often feel as if we were the last Christians on the face of the earth. I missed the hymns and the liturgy and the fellowship of the congregations of Christians God had surrounded me with in my youth. A Chaplain visited us when we got in helicopter range of the aircraft carrier in our Battle Group, and I wept as I received communion.
Jesus knew far more about wine than I do.
But when he spoke of the new wine of God's realm, he decanted an overflowing cup from his experience of wine to demonstrate something about those who dared to believe in his message of God in the midst of our life together. The frothy, fermenting "fruit of the gods" that refused to be contained reminded Jesus of those who left behind everything to follow him - those who would go where they did not wish to go after he released them to invite the world to celebrate God's love in a community called the Kingdom of God.
Our capacity to refresh others who are thirsty for love staggers our imagination. If we could but have a taste of what it is like to bring another (a stranger? a friend? a sibling?) to life, we would gladly accept Jesus' grace-filled invitation to pour us out for the sake of God's love for our hurting and lonely world. Our worship is a never-ending party - a celebration of the new wine, the very best wine of God's love, flowing without measure. It pours into the streets that stream from where we gather to return and search out the parched and dry.
New wineskins deliver the wine of gladness and reception into improbable but amazing grace. They do not contain it; there is no time or need to patch old containers, weary from holding it in. This wine is restless for the celebration - to be consumed and to consummate the marriage of God to the whole human community - indeed, to all of creation.
I drank this new wine to the dregs among pilgrims gathered in Nashville who gave their lives to minister in the name and power of Jesus to all people. This wine also flowed through my life into others, and I found that being poured out makes room for the never-ending stream of God's grace and love for the world. And I know that what draws me back to the saints gathered at Skyline is the reckless way we welcome the Messiah to recommend the vintage of our love to any and all who dare to believe in a world redefined by the love of God in all people.
Pour it on, God!
One of the speakers at Nashville invited us to take another look at Bonhoeffer's "Life Together". As I began to read this fascinating journal of a triumphant community of resistance to the monstrous hatred of Hitler's Germany, I was struck first by Bonhoeffer's invitation to recognize my own community of faith - the people who gather as Skyline - for the miracle God has created us to be for each other and for our neighbors.
Bonhoeffer writes that the kind of gratefulness a prisoner feels for a visitor who brings encouragement into darkness can multiply a thousand times over when we are surrounded by pilgrims on the journey of faith. But we often take each other for granted, of course, precisely because we are surrounded by an embarrassment of riches.
I remembered the way I used to feel so isolated as a Christ-follower and officer aboard USS Bunker Hill, in the vastness of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. When I would gather with a few others to pray or to read the scriptures together, I would often feel as if we were the last Christians on the face of the earth. I missed the hymns and the liturgy and the fellowship of the congregations of Christians God had surrounded me with in my youth. A Chaplain visited us when we got in helicopter range of the aircraft carrier in our Battle Group, and I wept as I received communion.
Jesus knew far more about wine than I do.
But when he spoke of the new wine of God's realm, he decanted an overflowing cup from his experience of wine to demonstrate something about those who dared to believe in his message of God in the midst of our life together. The frothy, fermenting "fruit of the gods" that refused to be contained reminded Jesus of those who left behind everything to follow him - those who would go where they did not wish to go after he released them to invite the world to celebrate God's love in a community called the Kingdom of God.
Our capacity to refresh others who are thirsty for love staggers our imagination. If we could but have a taste of what it is like to bring another (a stranger? a friend? a sibling?) to life, we would gladly accept Jesus' grace-filled invitation to pour us out for the sake of God's love for our hurting and lonely world. Our worship is a never-ending party - a celebration of the new wine, the very best wine of God's love, flowing without measure. It pours into the streets that stream from where we gather to return and search out the parched and dry.
New wineskins deliver the wine of gladness and reception into improbable but amazing grace. They do not contain it; there is no time or need to patch old containers, weary from holding it in. This wine is restless for the celebration - to be consumed and to consummate the marriage of God to the whole human community - indeed, to all of creation.
I drank this new wine to the dregs among pilgrims gathered in Nashville who gave their lives to minister in the name and power of Jesus to all people. This wine also flowed through my life into others, and I found that being poured out makes room for the never-ending stream of God's grace and love for the world. And I know that what draws me back to the saints gathered at Skyline is the reckless way we welcome the Messiah to recommend the vintage of our love to any and all who dare to believe in a world redefined by the love of God in all people.
Pour it on, God!
Monday, November 2, 2009
Back to Galilee
Last week, I spent six days in retreat, worship and contemplation of ways in which I can walk the journey of life as a pastor as a pilgrimage with good friends. Sixty of us gathered in Nashville to worship, reflect, exchange gifts of encouragement, and prepare to return to Galilee in anticipation of meeting Jesus in the daylight and dishes. After a rough journey home through delay and turbulence, I arrived home in a different state of mind and spirit.
During the week, Vicki asked me to tell her what was happening in Nashville, among the gathered pilgrims and falling leaves. I didn't have to think long. I told her that we all were learning the grace of walking in the Way of Jesus the Messiah as a pilgrimage rather than a solo journey - we did not have to do this alone. And I get the feeling pastors aren't the only ones who need to hear this gracious invitation to join a great cloud of witnesses as they seek God in the journey of life.
None of us returned with a ToDo list, or a 10-step process for turning things around. One of my friends voiced an invitation to treat their family members with a holy regard. On the flight home, the flight attendant reminded me that there "may not be a later". As I reunited with my family on All Hallows Eve, I savored the hugs we shared and listening to their stories of the week I had missed while in Nashville, as much as I enjoyed groping for words to tell about my adventure there.
And though I'll have more to say as I sift through the many memories of that week, I know for certain that I rediscovered a sense of my first love of God, and the people God loves, in the holy place we gathered in near Music Row and Vanderbilt University. Strangers who became companions in an instant of conversation or sitting quietly together in worship reminded me again and again of the irresistible love of God that drew and draws me to serve others in the name of Christ.
We reflected on the cycle of Grace and the cycle of Works, and the waxing and waning of our souls in both streams. I knew that my ability to trust God's love determines the direction of grace or works I pursue - my need to determine the outcome or the faith I experience simply and always to fall into love. To give into a stream of God's grace involves letting fears go as the tide washes over me and bears me to others. We talked often of fears and anxieties the crowd out our ability to fall into love.
And when I returned to the dishes? I discovered that the sense of grace waxing under a swelling moon returned with me. As I walked to church to gather around a table and talk of God's surprising and mysterious movement in our lives, Debbie Christie called me to tell me our nursery caregiver was unable to watch over the infants and toddlers. So I allowed the flow of grace to take me to watch over them.
I had baptized many of those little ones, but we had not played much together. And as we sang songs and danced in the chaotic flow of the nursery, I enjoyed the freedom they gave me to sit on the floor and enjoy learning about life. Vicki preached upstairs, but my return to the nursery seemed a fitting return to Galilee for me. I was looking for Jesus and found myself surrounded by toys and exuberant toddlers in the Kingdom of God.
During the week, Vicki asked me to tell her what was happening in Nashville, among the gathered pilgrims and falling leaves. I didn't have to think long. I told her that we all were learning the grace of walking in the Way of Jesus the Messiah as a pilgrimage rather than a solo journey - we did not have to do this alone. And I get the feeling pastors aren't the only ones who need to hear this gracious invitation to join a great cloud of witnesses as they seek God in the journey of life.
None of us returned with a ToDo list, or a 10-step process for turning things around. One of my friends voiced an invitation to treat their family members with a holy regard. On the flight home, the flight attendant reminded me that there "may not be a later". As I reunited with my family on All Hallows Eve, I savored the hugs we shared and listening to their stories of the week I had missed while in Nashville, as much as I enjoyed groping for words to tell about my adventure there.
And though I'll have more to say as I sift through the many memories of that week, I know for certain that I rediscovered a sense of my first love of God, and the people God loves, in the holy place we gathered in near Music Row and Vanderbilt University. Strangers who became companions in an instant of conversation or sitting quietly together in worship reminded me again and again of the irresistible love of God that drew and draws me to serve others in the name of Christ.
We reflected on the cycle of Grace and the cycle of Works, and the waxing and waning of our souls in both streams. I knew that my ability to trust God's love determines the direction of grace or works I pursue - my need to determine the outcome or the faith I experience simply and always to fall into love. To give into a stream of God's grace involves letting fears go as the tide washes over me and bears me to others. We talked often of fears and anxieties the crowd out our ability to fall into love.
And when I returned to the dishes? I discovered that the sense of grace waxing under a swelling moon returned with me. As I walked to church to gather around a table and talk of God's surprising and mysterious movement in our lives, Debbie Christie called me to tell me our nursery caregiver was unable to watch over the infants and toddlers. So I allowed the flow of grace to take me to watch over them.
I had baptized many of those little ones, but we had not played much together. And as we sang songs and danced in the chaotic flow of the nursery, I enjoyed the freedom they gave me to sit on the floor and enjoy learning about life. Vicki preached upstairs, but my return to the nursery seemed a fitting return to Galilee for me. I was looking for Jesus and found myself surrounded by toys and exuberant toddlers in the Kingdom of God.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Wake Me Up When September Ends
We had a rude awakening at September's end this fall at Skyline, when our Administrative Assistant informed us that she would be unable to cover our pay with the money she had in the bank as the month came to a close.
Yeah. I said rude awakening. I wasn't kidding.
Now before we get into interpretation mode, there's this little matter of "What Do We Do Now" that fairly screams for attention, and it got all of ours as October winds started blowing. We gathered leaders and contacted the people we are accountable to - we prayed and planned and spent some time with mentors and spiritual advisers. And we let everyone at Skyline Church know what was going on.
Which was weird at first. But refreshing in a way. Before we let the congregation know, the weight of the problem gave us little room to breathe. Here's how bad it got: I called the Navy recruiter in Philadelphia and started the process to become a navy chaplain. Serving as a chaplain is an honorable path - but if I had followed it at this point in my life, it would have meant an unending separation from my wife and children.
On October 5, we met with out District Superintendent, who directly supervises us and who advises the Bishop regarding appointments for all churches in the Wilmington District. We told him about our financial situation at the church. He told us to hang tight, at least until next July.
There's a funny thing about ordination. When we became United Methodist pastors, we vowed to serve the church and only the church - working 100% as pastors, resident theologians, spiritual counselors, and church administrators. This present crisis brings those vows into crystal clear focus. We serve under orders.
And so far in October? We've received offerings sufficient to cover expenses for two consecutive Sundays. The members and friends gathered Sunday have responded to our full disclosure with a renewed sense of calling and conviction - just as we have. The work and ministry of this faith community continues with passion and hope. Members face medical, spiritual and financial difficulties with courage - in the midst of a supportive and loving community.
Our theme this year is God's Future - with Hope. Yup. That's the ticket. I'm on board.
Yeah. I said rude awakening. I wasn't kidding.
Now before we get into interpretation mode, there's this little matter of "What Do We Do Now" that fairly screams for attention, and it got all of ours as October winds started blowing. We gathered leaders and contacted the people we are accountable to - we prayed and planned and spent some time with mentors and spiritual advisers. And we let everyone at Skyline Church know what was going on.
Which was weird at first. But refreshing in a way. Before we let the congregation know, the weight of the problem gave us little room to breathe. Here's how bad it got: I called the Navy recruiter in Philadelphia and started the process to become a navy chaplain. Serving as a chaplain is an honorable path - but if I had followed it at this point in my life, it would have meant an unending separation from my wife and children.
On October 5, we met with out District Superintendent, who directly supervises us and who advises the Bishop regarding appointments for all churches in the Wilmington District. We told him about our financial situation at the church. He told us to hang tight, at least until next July.
There's a funny thing about ordination. When we became United Methodist pastors, we vowed to serve the church and only the church - working 100% as pastors, resident theologians, spiritual counselors, and church administrators. This present crisis brings those vows into crystal clear focus. We serve under orders.
And so far in October? We've received offerings sufficient to cover expenses for two consecutive Sundays. The members and friends gathered Sunday have responded to our full disclosure with a renewed sense of calling and conviction - just as we have. The work and ministry of this faith community continues with passion and hope. Members face medical, spiritual and financial difficulties with courage - in the midst of a supportive and loving community.
Our theme this year is God's Future - with Hope. Yup. That's the ticket. I'm on board.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
A Church Without Walls
On Monday evening, after 21 months of conversation and study and dialogue, the Church Conference of Skyline UMC voted 48-6 (with 2 abstentions) to adopt an expanded Mission Statement of welcome to all people into a community of followers of Jesus (regardless of age, racial, ethnic or national origin, physical or mental ability, marital status, religious experience, affectional orientation, gender identity, or socioeconomic status). Such debate as there was focused on why we would need to specify who we are welcoming, when the word All might suffice. The overwhelming majority felt that while most churches claim to welcome All, the reality is that they restrict their welcome to exclude people on the margins of society - the very people Jesus came to serve. The group hopes for the day when spelling out our welcome won't be necessary, when the walls are broken down - but 86% of the 56 members of the church who voted felt that our church needs to make an explicit welcome statement to people for whom All does not in fact mean all in typical churches.
The Statement adopted June 22 reads:
The Mission of Skyline United Methodist Church is to
Reach Out to all people seeking a deeper relationship with God, regardless of age, racial, ethnic or national origin, physical or mental ability, marital status, religious experience, affectional orientation, gender identity, or socioeconomic status,
Welcome them into a community followers of Jesus who freely choose to worship, serve, and live together prayerfullyand in peace following a Methodist understanding of God's gift of grace,
Equip them to live as the Holy Spirit gifts and guides, and
Send them to serve and reach out to all people in Christ's name.
Before the vote on the Welcome Statement, there was considerable debate over the budget. We recognize that we have paid a price for standing with people on the margins, and that we will continue to pay a price. Many in the church want to see us fail - they would rather shut us down than see us open our doors to all people. As we consider the plans God has for us (Jeremiah 29:11-14a), I feel a sense of hope that outweighs fear. Among those who voted last night were our children (including our foster daughter). They joined us in voting to be a part of a church without walls, and then they served us communion. We have fought for the past few years here for their place in God's house as much as anyone else's. Whatever the future holds, last night we affirmed a Light that shines in the darkness (of fear and ignorance and hatred) that can never be extinguished.
The Statement adopted June 22 reads:
The Mission of Skyline United Methodist Church is to
Reach Out to all people seeking a deeper relationship with God, regardless of age, racial, ethnic or national origin, physical or mental ability, marital status, religious experience, affectional orientation, gender identity, or socioeconomic status,
Welcome them into a community followers of Jesus who freely choose to worship, serve, and live together prayerfullyand in peace following a Methodist understanding of God's gift of grace,
Equip them to live as the Holy Spirit gifts and guides, and
Send them to serve and reach out to all people in Christ's name.
Before the vote on the Welcome Statement, there was considerable debate over the budget. We recognize that we have paid a price for standing with people on the margins, and that we will continue to pay a price. Many in the church want to see us fail - they would rather shut us down than see us open our doors to all people. As we consider the plans God has for us (Jeremiah 29:11-14a), I feel a sense of hope that outweighs fear. Among those who voted last night were our children (including our foster daughter). They joined us in voting to be a part of a church without walls, and then they served us communion. We have fought for the past few years here for their place in God's house as much as anyone else's. Whatever the future holds, last night we affirmed a Light that shines in the darkness (of fear and ignorance and hatred) that can never be extinguished.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Scripture and Prayer
I write today in response to a query from a good friend about my purpose in offering a Bible study on scripture and homosexuality (in particular) and about my overall understanding of the place of scripture in spiritual discernment, vis-a-vis the many other ways spiritual seekers experience the presence and guidance of the Divine. Joy puts it best when she summarizes that scripture and prayer (in words and in action) are profoundly related and necessary to each other, both in confirming and in conforming (transforming) human experience of the divine.
As an ordained pastor, I am accountable to scriptural authority - but the interpretive latitude of that mandate embraces tradition, reason, and experience in what amounts to an understanding of ongoing inspiration, at least in practice (if not officially). Of course, in the church, the latitude is considerably more vast - given what many pundits call scriptural illiteracy in the church (among laity and clergy, to be blunt). That illiteracy accounts for our flocking around such spurious projects as "The Prayer of Jabez" or "Your Best Life Now".
As I continue to grow in faith, especially in the wake of Divinity School, I experience scripture in the way I have been taught that an icon functions in prayer, as a spiritual catalyst or window through which we can (though by no means always do) experience greater clarity of understanding of God's presence, will and Way. I have come to understand that scriptural authority is not inherent in itself, but lies in its appropriation in the faith community that gathers around it to confirm their experience of the Holy in every generation and to reinforce the Spirit's call to live for God and others.
Different people will understand scriptural authority (and it's place in Christian discernment) in different ways - as the scriptures themselves amply attest. My purpose in offering an examination of scriptural passages traditionally used in the church to justify discrimination and abuse of homosexual persons is to demonstrate one way to resolve an apparent conflict between scriptural discernment (an apparent divine justification of punishment of homosexual people) and human experience (the fruit of faithfulness and love expressed in the lives of homosexual persons). I do not believe there is any conflict - traditional interpretations of scripture notwithstanding.
I am well aware that there may be no receptive audience for what I have to say. On the one hand, those Christians who hold to a more traditional (they might claim that it is more "literal") understanding of scriptural interpretation and authority certainly argue that my interpretation is de facto liberal revisionism in order to reconcile scripture to the higher authority (for me, they might argue) of human reason and experience. On the other hand, someone who holds a far more nuanced understanding of scriptural authority and interpetation might see my project as an anachronistic gloss on a hopelessly time-bound document that has little contemporary relevance either for religious or philosophical seekers of Truth. I prayed long and hard about scrapping the entire project for those reasons. But in the end, I felt I needed to speak my mind, not so much for the defense of scriptural authority, but as a testimony and thanksgiving of how scripture functions in my life as a means of discernment and experience of the reality of the divine in the human community (past and present).
Given my profession as a scholar of scripture and a theologian, I suppose my passion for this project should come as no surprise. I grew up in a tradition that valued scripture as the sine qua non of spiritual discernment, and I continue to experience God's presence in it's profound testimony. Though I no longer understand scriptural inspiration in a magical way (i.e., divine dictation), I value more than I can say the power of scripture to draw me into conversation with a community that spans six millennia and more of companions in this spiritual journey that is life. These include nomads, prophets, poets, kings, beggars, lepers, messiahs, disciples, governors, soldiers, revolutionaries, farmers and fishers, shepherds, prostitutes, children and their parents. They are not dead to me. Their testimony (both implicit and "literal") interprets my life and experience just as I am compelled to interpret its mysterious meanings (sometimes a different facet with each fresh reading), and calls me far beyond the boundaries of myself - to experience something that begins to take the shape of what we (too casually, more often than not) refer to as God.
I am a student of literature, and the scriptures are certainly great literature. But I have inherited, for better or worse, a tradition of interpretation and a community that has gathered and gathered around this collection (canon) as a vessel for understanding God's ways among the human community. Their relevance or authority in every generation comes from our engagement not so much with the words but with the community that gathered around those words in many ages and times. We ratify their authority and ability to "lead us into all Truth" not a priori, because they are the Holy writings, but because more and more of us experience their power to interpret our experience (of prayer and of life) as related by love to one another and to God. For some, this happens on a surface level that I am tempted to dismiss as naive and immature. At moments of better clarity, I realize that even in this apparent disparity, God's grace meets each of us at our point of need and receptivity.
As an ordained pastor, I am accountable to scriptural authority - but the interpretive latitude of that mandate embraces tradition, reason, and experience in what amounts to an understanding of ongoing inspiration, at least in practice (if not officially). Of course, in the church, the latitude is considerably more vast - given what many pundits call scriptural illiteracy in the church (among laity and clergy, to be blunt). That illiteracy accounts for our flocking around such spurious projects as "The Prayer of Jabez" or "Your Best Life Now".
As I continue to grow in faith, especially in the wake of Divinity School, I experience scripture in the way I have been taught that an icon functions in prayer, as a spiritual catalyst or window through which we can (though by no means always do) experience greater clarity of understanding of God's presence, will and Way. I have come to understand that scriptural authority is not inherent in itself, but lies in its appropriation in the faith community that gathers around it to confirm their experience of the Holy in every generation and to reinforce the Spirit's call to live for God and others.
Different people will understand scriptural authority (and it's place in Christian discernment) in different ways - as the scriptures themselves amply attest. My purpose in offering an examination of scriptural passages traditionally used in the church to justify discrimination and abuse of homosexual persons is to demonstrate one way to resolve an apparent conflict between scriptural discernment (an apparent divine justification of punishment of homosexual people) and human experience (the fruit of faithfulness and love expressed in the lives of homosexual persons). I do not believe there is any conflict - traditional interpretations of scripture notwithstanding.
I am well aware that there may be no receptive audience for what I have to say. On the one hand, those Christians who hold to a more traditional (they might claim that it is more "literal") understanding of scriptural interpretation and authority certainly argue that my interpretation is de facto liberal revisionism in order to reconcile scripture to the higher authority (for me, they might argue) of human reason and experience. On the other hand, someone who holds a far more nuanced understanding of scriptural authority and interpetation might see my project as an anachronistic gloss on a hopelessly time-bound document that has little contemporary relevance either for religious or philosophical seekers of Truth. I prayed long and hard about scrapping the entire project for those reasons. But in the end, I felt I needed to speak my mind, not so much for the defense of scriptural authority, but as a testimony and thanksgiving of how scripture functions in my life as a means of discernment and experience of the reality of the divine in the human community (past and present).
Given my profession as a scholar of scripture and a theologian, I suppose my passion for this project should come as no surprise. I grew up in a tradition that valued scripture as the sine qua non of spiritual discernment, and I continue to experience God's presence in it's profound testimony. Though I no longer understand scriptural inspiration in a magical way (i.e., divine dictation), I value more than I can say the power of scripture to draw me into conversation with a community that spans six millennia and more of companions in this spiritual journey that is life. These include nomads, prophets, poets, kings, beggars, lepers, messiahs, disciples, governors, soldiers, revolutionaries, farmers and fishers, shepherds, prostitutes, children and their parents. They are not dead to me. Their testimony (both implicit and "literal") interprets my life and experience just as I am compelled to interpret its mysterious meanings (sometimes a different facet with each fresh reading), and calls me far beyond the boundaries of myself - to experience something that begins to take the shape of what we (too casually, more often than not) refer to as God.
I am a student of literature, and the scriptures are certainly great literature. But I have inherited, for better or worse, a tradition of interpretation and a community that has gathered and gathered around this collection (canon) as a vessel for understanding God's ways among the human community. Their relevance or authority in every generation comes from our engagement not so much with the words but with the community that gathered around those words in many ages and times. We ratify their authority and ability to "lead us into all Truth" not a priori, because they are the Holy writings, but because more and more of us experience their power to interpret our experience (of prayer and of life) as related by love to one another and to God. For some, this happens on a surface level that I am tempted to dismiss as naive and immature. At moments of better clarity, I realize that even in this apparent disparity, God's grace meets each of us at our point of need and receptivity.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Outliers and the Fate We Make That Makes Us
Bo Gordy-Stith's review of Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers: The Story of Success" (Little, Brown and Company, 2008)
I've just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest study of human behavior, Outliers, about the backstory of success in America and to a lesser degree, in the world. The other books are The Tipping Point and Blink, both of which I enjoyed immensely. Outliers did not disappoint. Gladwell delivers a diverse range of applications of his thesis with humor and the kind of penetrating wisdom you would expect from a poet who can reveal some hidden secret in something you think you know all about but have never really seen.
Someone asked me if Outliers was a religious book, and I told them that it could be a way to understand the more subtle and powerful ways of grace in our world. But while Gladwell prompts an exploration of the road to success (and how we might widen it a bit), his definition of success creates an extraordinary tension he can never resolve.
Stratospheric success, it turns out, according to Gladwell, involves the gift of talent and extraordinary, relentless hours of practice - 10,000 hours of practice. That's the kind of precision Gladwell delivers repeatedly, like the fact that you can recall a series of numbers you can recite in 2 seconds, or how the ability to stay with a math problem for 22 minutes makes the difference between excelling in math and merely surviving. Or if you're a southerner who has just received an insult, you'll walk to within 2 feet of a bouncer before turning aside, rather than 6 feet (for anyone not from the south). All of the numbers, of course, are based on studies Gladwell cites to buttress his argument that reads more like a conversation over a really good meal.
The last tidbit exemplifies the thesis that gives the book title an ironic twist: in addition to talent and determination, outliers are inevitably products of their families and the larger communities (living and dead) and even history - in other words, they're not really outliers at all - they're inescapably woven into the human social fabric. And though Gladwell spends much more time exploring this thesis than suggesting ways to capitalize on it in society, he repeatedly asserts that taking the social environment part of the success equation far more seriously would result in far more opportunity for success.
Near the end of the book, he cites an inner city school program that closes the well-known learning gap between rich and poor students by extending the classroom hours and nixing a three-month summer break (where studies Gladwell cites demonstrate the real reason for the learning gap between rich and poor occurs). Earlier in the book, Gladwell writes about a group of geniuses followed by a sociologist whose success or failure correlated well with the income and education levels of their parents. The extended hours school program recognizes this cultural reality and then mitigates it essentially by removing the kids from their unsupportive home environment.
Another example of what Gladwell refers to as taking cultural factors seriously involves the retraining of Korean pilots in the wake of a series of accidents. Recognizing that a Korean culture of deference to superiors made it difficult for co-pilots to correct pilot errors, an (American) consultant banished the Korean language from the cockpits, essentially creating a competing cockpit culture that would allow the egalitarian cooperation necessary to safely fly commercial jets. And of course it worked.
But this is just where Gladwell's highly entertaining book leaves me unsettled. The author shifts between the draconian social re-engineering I mention above on the one hand and a resignation to the fate of (for instance) being born in 1835, 1917, 1951, or on January 1, which would give you a much better chance to be one of the richest persons in the history of the world, a highly successful Jewish lawyer in New York, an architect of the PC revolution, or a professional Canadian hockey player, respectively.
Radical social reengineering (or, more to the point, eradication, as in the Korean Airline cockpits) to level the playing field for far more people to succeed and "luck" (to use Bill Gates' words) form opposite poles of Gladwell's study of success. But I can find no middle ground - no spectrum of what I have come to call Grace in between the harsh poles of Make and Fate. In the end, Gladwell refuses a "bloom where you're planted" ethic for a success standard imposed by a non-existent patchwork culture he forms from Asian rice paddies to European tailors and obnoxious air traffic controllers from the Bronx - all with the goal of getting into a mythical house on a hill, via a road marked with 10,000 hours of unrelenting toil for greatness.
His epilogue is a colorful description of his own patchwork Jamaican/English/African cultural history, which makes a kind of sense, given the thrust of his thesis. The view from his house on a hill must be marvelous, and he justly recognizes that it is built literally on the foundation of the backs of his tireless and blessed forebears (blessed by fortune in ironic ways).
As it happens, I'm also reading Tom Sawyer to my 12 year old son and 11 year old foster son, each night as they go to bed. They boys love the hero of the quintessentially American tale, and strive to emulate him in their lives. They look forward to a golden summer of delights at the helm of a mountain bike, in the pool, surrounded by budding beauty they (like Tom) are beginning more and more to appreciate, and at the computer screen, where they live out a heroic existence Tom would not have been able to imagine. My son is gifted with extraordinary intelligence in math and science. My foster son is a whiz on the basketball court and skating rink - and is remarkably observant. My daughter already dreams of putting her considerable empathy and music talent together into a career in music therapy.
The idea of sending them to a rice paddy this summer to increase their chance at success seems to mock the very idea of success. And grace. No doubt hard work finds its own reward. But the culture that nurtures them and my wife and me encourages us to value other virtues as well, like friendship, sacrifice for others, and Sabbath. And grace. Which promises me and my community that God has indeed gifted us all for a purpose.
In the midst of his discussion of the arduous labor involved in rice farming in China, Gladwell defines what he calls meaningful work. To be meaningful, Gladwell asserts that work must involve (1) a clear relationship between effort and reward; (2) complexity; and (3) autonomy (p. 236). Those sound like the reflections of an entrepreneur - an author, perhaps, from the vantage point of the house on a hill. They are the words of a self-made man (albeit haunted by the injustice of fate that allowed him to make himself on the backs of others).
The words I would use to define meaningful work would be challenge, variety, and value (not merely defined in terms of money, of course). Life work should be stimulating, worthy of the creator and their creativity, and it should make the world a better place. Perhaps that's too much to ask, but in the end, I'd rather not settle for anything less (for myself or for anyone else). Success does not mean masking my cultural impediments, but recognizing in them (and in myself) unique strengths and (as I would label them as a pastor) gifts from God.
Gladwell entertains, surely. And he has collected a stunning amount of data to ponder the meaning of success. But his title dooms his thesis by posing an insoluble dilemma: how to escape the bonds of one's culture in order to achieve “success”. He is right about one thing, certainly. There are no true outliers in the human community. No islands. We are bound together in a shared history and family, and we truly succeed only when we reclaim both our cultural heritage as a gift - and our lives as God's gift to the human family.
I've just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest study of human behavior, Outliers, about the backstory of success in America and to a lesser degree, in the world. The other books are The Tipping Point and Blink, both of which I enjoyed immensely. Outliers did not disappoint. Gladwell delivers a diverse range of applications of his thesis with humor and the kind of penetrating wisdom you would expect from a poet who can reveal some hidden secret in something you think you know all about but have never really seen.
Someone asked me if Outliers was a religious book, and I told them that it could be a way to understand the more subtle and powerful ways of grace in our world. But while Gladwell prompts an exploration of the road to success (and how we might widen it a bit), his definition of success creates an extraordinary tension he can never resolve.
Stratospheric success, it turns out, according to Gladwell, involves the gift of talent and extraordinary, relentless hours of practice - 10,000 hours of practice. That's the kind of precision Gladwell delivers repeatedly, like the fact that you can recall a series of numbers you can recite in 2 seconds, or how the ability to stay with a math problem for 22 minutes makes the difference between excelling in math and merely surviving. Or if you're a southerner who has just received an insult, you'll walk to within 2 feet of a bouncer before turning aside, rather than 6 feet (for anyone not from the south). All of the numbers, of course, are based on studies Gladwell cites to buttress his argument that reads more like a conversation over a really good meal.
The last tidbit exemplifies the thesis that gives the book title an ironic twist: in addition to talent and determination, outliers are inevitably products of their families and the larger communities (living and dead) and even history - in other words, they're not really outliers at all - they're inescapably woven into the human social fabric. And though Gladwell spends much more time exploring this thesis than suggesting ways to capitalize on it in society, he repeatedly asserts that taking the social environment part of the success equation far more seriously would result in far more opportunity for success.
Near the end of the book, he cites an inner city school program that closes the well-known learning gap between rich and poor students by extending the classroom hours and nixing a three-month summer break (where studies Gladwell cites demonstrate the real reason for the learning gap between rich and poor occurs). Earlier in the book, Gladwell writes about a group of geniuses followed by a sociologist whose success or failure correlated well with the income and education levels of their parents. The extended hours school program recognizes this cultural reality and then mitigates it essentially by removing the kids from their unsupportive home environment.
Another example of what Gladwell refers to as taking cultural factors seriously involves the retraining of Korean pilots in the wake of a series of accidents. Recognizing that a Korean culture of deference to superiors made it difficult for co-pilots to correct pilot errors, an (American) consultant banished the Korean language from the cockpits, essentially creating a competing cockpit culture that would allow the egalitarian cooperation necessary to safely fly commercial jets. And of course it worked.
But this is just where Gladwell's highly entertaining book leaves me unsettled. The author shifts between the draconian social re-engineering I mention above on the one hand and a resignation to the fate of (for instance) being born in 1835, 1917, 1951, or on January 1, which would give you a much better chance to be one of the richest persons in the history of the world, a highly successful Jewish lawyer in New York, an architect of the PC revolution, or a professional Canadian hockey player, respectively.
Radical social reengineering (or, more to the point, eradication, as in the Korean Airline cockpits) to level the playing field for far more people to succeed and "luck" (to use Bill Gates' words) form opposite poles of Gladwell's study of success. But I can find no middle ground - no spectrum of what I have come to call Grace in between the harsh poles of Make and Fate. In the end, Gladwell refuses a "bloom where you're planted" ethic for a success standard imposed by a non-existent patchwork culture he forms from Asian rice paddies to European tailors and obnoxious air traffic controllers from the Bronx - all with the goal of getting into a mythical house on a hill, via a road marked with 10,000 hours of unrelenting toil for greatness.
His epilogue is a colorful description of his own patchwork Jamaican/English/African cultural history, which makes a kind of sense, given the thrust of his thesis. The view from his house on a hill must be marvelous, and he justly recognizes that it is built literally on the foundation of the backs of his tireless and blessed forebears (blessed by fortune in ironic ways).
As it happens, I'm also reading Tom Sawyer to my 12 year old son and 11 year old foster son, each night as they go to bed. They boys love the hero of the quintessentially American tale, and strive to emulate him in their lives. They look forward to a golden summer of delights at the helm of a mountain bike, in the pool, surrounded by budding beauty they (like Tom) are beginning more and more to appreciate, and at the computer screen, where they live out a heroic existence Tom would not have been able to imagine. My son is gifted with extraordinary intelligence in math and science. My foster son is a whiz on the basketball court and skating rink - and is remarkably observant. My daughter already dreams of putting her considerable empathy and music talent together into a career in music therapy.
The idea of sending them to a rice paddy this summer to increase their chance at success seems to mock the very idea of success. And grace. No doubt hard work finds its own reward. But the culture that nurtures them and my wife and me encourages us to value other virtues as well, like friendship, sacrifice for others, and Sabbath. And grace. Which promises me and my community that God has indeed gifted us all for a purpose.
In the midst of his discussion of the arduous labor involved in rice farming in China, Gladwell defines what he calls meaningful work. To be meaningful, Gladwell asserts that work must involve (1) a clear relationship between effort and reward; (2) complexity; and (3) autonomy (p. 236). Those sound like the reflections of an entrepreneur - an author, perhaps, from the vantage point of the house on a hill. They are the words of a self-made man (albeit haunted by the injustice of fate that allowed him to make himself on the backs of others).
The words I would use to define meaningful work would be challenge, variety, and value (not merely defined in terms of money, of course). Life work should be stimulating, worthy of the creator and their creativity, and it should make the world a better place. Perhaps that's too much to ask, but in the end, I'd rather not settle for anything less (for myself or for anyone else). Success does not mean masking my cultural impediments, but recognizing in them (and in myself) unique strengths and (as I would label them as a pastor) gifts from God.
Gladwell entertains, surely. And he has collected a stunning amount of data to ponder the meaning of success. But his title dooms his thesis by posing an insoluble dilemma: how to escape the bonds of one's culture in order to achieve “success”. He is right about one thing, certainly. There are no true outliers in the human community. No islands. We are bound together in a shared history and family, and we truly succeed only when we reclaim both our cultural heritage as a gift - and our lives as God's gift to the human family.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Worship at Skyline Retrospective
I'm reading Colossians 1:15-18 this morning and thinking about how grateful I am to have been a part of the worshiping community at Skyline for the past year. Our theme has been sharing the generous treasure of God, and I have witnessed much sharing in our worship experience. So many people have gathered in the spirit of 1 Corinthians 14:26 and shared generously of themselves that our time of community worship has spilled out in many ways into the rest of our week. Musicians, actors, technical support persons, artists and designers, guests with an invitation or appeal to serve, dancers, preachers, ushers and greeters, persons dedicating themselves to God, caring prayer ministers, and all who gathered faithfully every Sunday at Skyline - each of us has brought our needs and our abundance to God and to the rest of this community to give God glory and honor in our worship.
I remember the special dance on Christmas Eve, when we watched a celebration of Mary's fearfulness and faithfulness unfold before our eyes that special night. I remember the many opportunities we had to hear an impassioned invitation from a representative of a ministry beyond the walls of our community (Urban Promise, Perpetual Prosperity Pumps, Delaware Foster Care, Friendship House, Habitat for Humanity, Juvenile Diabetes Reasearch Fund, among others) and the many people who responded with their feet as our worship continued in our foyer and beyond. I think of the special times of dedication of ministers, when we reached out our hands and hearts for a blessing, baptisms, communion and anointing into membership - high holy moments when we enacted the scripture promises around which we gathered every week.
I remember and give thanks to God for the spontaneous eruption into applause (some churches call it hand praise) when we weren't quite ready to finish singing to God's glory. Over this past year, the bands led us into the throneroom where we danced and acted out the drama of God's grace - singing and proclaiming by our words and by our actions the abundant life of Jesus the Messiah in our midst. We participated in a living sanctuary, where all people are truly welcomed and invited to live fully into the Kingdom of God. We came to be filled, and discovered the bounty that God had already provided in our lives as we shared with God and with each other.
There were times last Fall when I wondered whether we had not asked too much of this congregation as leaders. Yet even through the struggle of the past couple of years to determine who God is calling us to be as a community, we have gathered for worship in spite of our fear and inability to know how this journey will turn out. Jesus Christ has gathered us. And even when we have not been able to see eye to eye, we have always been able to join our hearts in praise of an awesome God. And with the Spring, Skyline seems to be experiencing a new awakening of spiritual vitality in worship. This vitality has arisen out of a diverse (but not divisive) community gathered at the gentle invitation of Jesus - in whom all things truly hold together.
My prayer for the coming year, as we celebrate especially God's plans to give us hope and a future, is that we will discover fresh ways to unite our worship together with our worship in daily life. I pray that we will be able to open ourselves to God's leading in worship, creating space for spontenaety, improvisation, the leading of the Spirit, communal discernment, interaction and moments of response, and all of this in a way that invites but does not compel participation. I pray we will learn to be at peace in silence, waiting together on God. And I pray that we will integrate conscious, intentional practices of waiting on God's Spirit together, and together following the promptings of our awesome God.
I remember the special dance on Christmas Eve, when we watched a celebration of Mary's fearfulness and faithfulness unfold before our eyes that special night. I remember the many opportunities we had to hear an impassioned invitation from a representative of a ministry beyond the walls of our community (Urban Promise, Perpetual Prosperity Pumps, Delaware Foster Care, Friendship House, Habitat for Humanity, Juvenile Diabetes Reasearch Fund, among others) and the many people who responded with their feet as our worship continued in our foyer and beyond. I think of the special times of dedication of ministers, when we reached out our hands and hearts for a blessing, baptisms, communion and anointing into membership - high holy moments when we enacted the scripture promises around which we gathered every week.
I remember and give thanks to God for the spontaneous eruption into applause (some churches call it hand praise) when we weren't quite ready to finish singing to God's glory. Over this past year, the bands led us into the throneroom where we danced and acted out the drama of God's grace - singing and proclaiming by our words and by our actions the abundant life of Jesus the Messiah in our midst. We participated in a living sanctuary, where all people are truly welcomed and invited to live fully into the Kingdom of God. We came to be filled, and discovered the bounty that God had already provided in our lives as we shared with God and with each other.
There were times last Fall when I wondered whether we had not asked too much of this congregation as leaders. Yet even through the struggle of the past couple of years to determine who God is calling us to be as a community, we have gathered for worship in spite of our fear and inability to know how this journey will turn out. Jesus Christ has gathered us. And even when we have not been able to see eye to eye, we have always been able to join our hearts in praise of an awesome God. And with the Spring, Skyline seems to be experiencing a new awakening of spiritual vitality in worship. This vitality has arisen out of a diverse (but not divisive) community gathered at the gentle invitation of Jesus - in whom all things truly hold together.
My prayer for the coming year, as we celebrate especially God's plans to give us hope and a future, is that we will discover fresh ways to unite our worship together with our worship in daily life. I pray that we will be able to open ourselves to God's leading in worship, creating space for spontenaety, improvisation, the leading of the Spirit, communal discernment, interaction and moments of response, and all of this in a way that invites but does not compel participation. I pray we will learn to be at peace in silence, waiting together on God. And I pray that we will integrate conscious, intentional practices of waiting on God's Spirit together, and together following the promptings of our awesome God.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Moving on
I want to quit. Sometimes. Like today.
Not life. Sometimes, I want to quit hoping - and simply live til I die, til others die around me. That is the inevitable path we take, regardless of our outlook. Love and hope are interchangeable, it seems to me. Both are ways we cope with this inevitability. Of death. Not with rage, but with a kind of persistence in the face of so much that would contradict hope. And love.
I could join others in this act of inaction. They poke fun, or they ignore my efforts at living by hope. Mostly they ignore. Me and anyone else who dares to live by hope before death claims us. Or life. The blunt hardness of it. The tenuous skin of handling life - of taking what comes and dealing with it - stretched far too thin over a sea of chance and complexity that mock any attempt at control. We dance as if walking on water - and even our dance resembles the staggering fall of a drunk. We know where this is going. Where it has to end.
Yet some of us dance anyway. And the thing of it is, we don't always fall. Sometimes, the reeling becomes a reel, a launching impossible apart from the terrifying leap into love we take daily, moment by moment, in the face of the maw of uncertainty. We fall. And some of us discover in the act of falling a kind of flight - not so pitiful or pitiable as it might seem from the perspective of those who watch us fall.
Like martyrs who pushed through throngs of would-be faithful, reaching out trembling hands for the blessing of a touch - as if such a tenuous connection could transfer even a glimpse of the leaping life (no, it cannot). Though once having tasted this life (abundant?), I know that nothing else could satisfy the thirst borne of that first taste. I'm cursed with hope. With love that refuses to let me out if its clutches, no matter how hard I kick and scream and rage against its refusal to let me go. To reject me once and for all and let me die in pieces.
I am sacrificed on the altar of love and hope in this world. I have no choice. Nor can I keep it to myself. The curse plays out from my original choice to cleave to hope and to risk love. Relentlessly. There is no longer an option to choose not to choose. I have made a choice that forever defines me, that defines the life I live. Hope eternal, rebirthing relentlessly without mercy, every time I die. I may hide in shame in the garden for an hour or two, but there is an appointment that will be kept in the cool of the afternoon, when the wind blows.
Then demons return to find no room in this house. They go away, empty-handed. As always. Here is where hope lives. On and on.
Not life. Sometimes, I want to quit hoping - and simply live til I die, til others die around me. That is the inevitable path we take, regardless of our outlook. Love and hope are interchangeable, it seems to me. Both are ways we cope with this inevitability. Of death. Not with rage, but with a kind of persistence in the face of so much that would contradict hope. And love.
I could join others in this act of inaction. They poke fun, or they ignore my efforts at living by hope. Mostly they ignore. Me and anyone else who dares to live by hope before death claims us. Or life. The blunt hardness of it. The tenuous skin of handling life - of taking what comes and dealing with it - stretched far too thin over a sea of chance and complexity that mock any attempt at control. We dance as if walking on water - and even our dance resembles the staggering fall of a drunk. We know where this is going. Where it has to end.
Yet some of us dance anyway. And the thing of it is, we don't always fall. Sometimes, the reeling becomes a reel, a launching impossible apart from the terrifying leap into love we take daily, moment by moment, in the face of the maw of uncertainty. We fall. And some of us discover in the act of falling a kind of flight - not so pitiful or pitiable as it might seem from the perspective of those who watch us fall.
Like martyrs who pushed through throngs of would-be faithful, reaching out trembling hands for the blessing of a touch - as if such a tenuous connection could transfer even a glimpse of the leaping life (no, it cannot). Though once having tasted this life (abundant?), I know that nothing else could satisfy the thirst borne of that first taste. I'm cursed with hope. With love that refuses to let me out if its clutches, no matter how hard I kick and scream and rage against its refusal to let me go. To reject me once and for all and let me die in pieces.
I am sacrificed on the altar of love and hope in this world. I have no choice. Nor can I keep it to myself. The curse plays out from my original choice to cleave to hope and to risk love. Relentlessly. There is no longer an option to choose not to choose. I have made a choice that forever defines me, that defines the life I live. Hope eternal, rebirthing relentlessly without mercy, every time I die. I may hide in shame in the garden for an hour or two, but there is an appointment that will be kept in the cool of the afternoon, when the wind blows.
Then demons return to find no room in this house. They go away, empty-handed. As always. Here is where hope lives. On and on.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Skate Park @ Skyline
Greetings!
Thank you all for expressing your interest in exploring the idea of a skate park at Skyline for youth in our area. The following people decided to vote with their feet Sunday, April 19 and the following week: Josh Magnusson, Lynn Fahey, Cindy Sisofo, Tim Transue, Deb Ressler, Kari Butts, Lori Citro, Ivan Turner, III, Sarah Sacconey, Gwen Cichocki, and Joe DiEmidio.
At this point, I'd like for us to introduce ourselves to each other, and share what attrancted us to this kind of mission/project, and what we might be able to contribute. I want to set a meeting date, so we might also want to let each other know when would be the best time to meet (weekends, weeknights, etc.).
Kari Butts works at Heritage Elementary School, and shared with me Sunday (April 26) that she has already met with more than a dozen 5th graders (who traded away their recess to meet with her to talk about a skate park) and will be surveying them to get an idea of what they would be interested in. A couple of you have shared with me that you might know about some funding sources we could explore.
I spent yesterday visiting area skate shops and came up with the following info: The Newport Skate Park might be the best place for us to begin exploring what might be involved in putting a park together. The website says they're open on Wednesday nights, so if anyone's up for a field trip, I might be going tomorrow night. They've been running since 1997, and are an outreach ministry of Family Life Church.
At a skate shop in Newark, I saw a flyer about the Wilmington Skate Project. It looks like they're halfway toward a goal of raising $800,000 for a skate park to be built under I-95. They run Skate Jams to raise money and awareness from time to time, setting up elements in parking lots, and several hundred skaters always show up.
That's about all I have so far. Let us (everyone in the group) hear from you. Let me know if you're a Facebook maven, to see if it would be worth starting a group there. Check the church website, or simply share your comment on this Blog and let's see where we stand. Feel free to share why you signed up to join us, what attracts you to this project, what kind of vision you have for what you hope we will be able to accomplish (and when we might accomplish it), and what you think you might be able to bring to the effort (information, expertise, passion, research, etc.).
Let's get it on.
Bo
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Review of Christopher Hitchens' Book: "God is Not Great"
I’ve just finished reading Christopher Hitchens’ “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” (New York: Twelve Books, 2007). It’s one of a half-dozen or so atheist screeds that have been making the rounds since our communal 9/11 scare in America, in the new world order where fear and finger-pointing are the new gold rush territory for hucksters. After my review, I quote a few of the reviews which closely examine Hitchens’ naïve argument for an Enlightenment utopia.
As a deconstructionist, Hitchens presents some well-worn arguments that monotheistic faith is based on fables used to explain a pre-scientific understanding of human existence as if he discovered them. He presents the argument that the story of the woman taken in adultery in John 8 and the ending of Mark are not found in the earliest manuscripts as “shocking” (p. 122) and “astonishing” (p. 142). Yet even translations of the New Testament published by conservative publishing houses have acknowledged these facts in the texts themselves for decades. Hitchens, who only quotes the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, apparently did not know this until he read Bart Ehrman, who Hitchen’s credits with the “astonishing finding” of the short ending of Mark (in Ehrman's 2005 book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.).
Other reviews comment on similar factual blunders, or on Hitchens’ presentation of editorial gloss as fact in this work purported to be a paean to reason, Truth, and enlightened discourse. Which raises a problem when considering Hitchens’ other arguments and factual claims, covering a huge swath of human history, theology, and scientific inquiry. From a macro perspective, his argument that religious expression has been tainted with atrocity in the course of human history sounds plausible enough. Yet to leap with Hitchens to the conclusion that all religious expression must be so tainted (the thesis of his book) requires faith that his patchwork anecdotal claims are both representative and accurate. And close examination of many of these claims would strain all but the most blind faith.
His commentary on the Hebrew and Christian scriptures "covers" a bare 26 pages. The Qur’an gets another 13 pages. Søren Kierkegaard examines the story of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) in over 100 pages of his 1843 book, Fear and Trembling. Hitchens claims to cover the “plain meaning of this frightful story” in a paragraph. In this, Christopher Hitchens shares far more in common with Christian fundamentalists than he cares to acknowledge (and who for him represent the sum total of Christian experience). Here lies Hitchens’ argument’s greatest flaw in rationale: straw-man arguments can only be a strong as the version of their adversary’s claim they attempt to undermine.
As a Christian pastor and theologian, I don’t need an atheist to make me aware of the misdeeds of the church throughout history. Nor do I need him to point out for me the discoveries of scriptural textual scholarship, criticism and archaeology. Hitchens trots forward the archaeological research works of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (page 102) as evidence that the "Mosaic myths" of the Exodus and conquest of the promised land "can be safely discarded". I have read their books with fascination. They have enriched my reasoned faith in God and in the patchwork stories of generations of people who have sought to know and worship God and serve each other in love. I have used Bart Ehrman’s books on New Testament textual criticism in my sermons at Skyline UMC. So many of the “show-stoppers” Hitchens employs as proof that religion and the "god" of religion are no longer useful in a technologically advanced world are for me but another sign that the church is a curious incarnation of the divine and humanity at our best and worst.
Here’s an amazing news flash for anyone convinced by Hitchens’ anecdotal arguments: religion is neither the cause nor the cure for the human capacity of evil and of goodness. Neither is religion some monolithic reality, in its bewildering variety of expressions and practices throughout human history. It can claim no monopoly on morality or truth, or freedom from error. What it can demonstrate is a vast collection of human experience of love, truth, and striving after the ever-elusive goal of escaping the bounds of self in search of unity with a reality that encompasses and transcends the mystery of life.
A man of letters can surely appreciate the power of metaphor where the sum of observable facts cannot begin to do justice to the reality to which they only hint. Religion is itself a grand metaphor – a collaboration of the human tribe throughout time that persists not merely because of our desire for spiritual comfort but precisely because of our insatiable thirst for knowledge and inquiry. No human discipline or tradition holds a monopoly either on epistemology or pedagogy, including science, reason, art or any other human expression of understanding and contemplation. That Hitchens claims that his own pedagogy and experience qualify as the pinnacle of human understanding seems more than a little absurd – and dogmatic.
At times, he asks to be left alone. For the most part, Hitchens lives in an imaginary world where it would be possible to divorce human understanding from religious experience and understanding. He frequently resorts to name-calling (“stupid” and “boobie” are his favorite epitaphs for anyone who disagrees with his assessment of religious experience, which he repeatedly boils down to a fear of death). Which brings me to a final point.
Christopher Hitchens wears his personal religious experience like some chest of cub scout achievement awards, which he believes gives him the street cred to critique Christian Protestantism, in particular, from within. That his grandmother was Jewish does not, however, give him some sort of inside track on understanding religious experience, any more than does his abandonment of the Anglican expression of Christianity at the age of 9 (when his tutor, Mrs. Jean Watts, overstepped her understanding of theology on a nature walk – see pages 1-3). Basing his understanding of Christianity on his dogmatic (his claims to the contrary notwithstanding) re-reading of anecdotal history and a 9-year old experience of Anglican faith is like calling his baptism into the Greek Orthodox Church in order to marry his first wife a conversion.
That Hitchens' argument with religious excess is justified goes almost without saying. As a Christian ordained minister, I fight against misogyny, bigotry, racism, homophobia, and nationalism that masquerade as religiosity. Though I treasure, study, and regularly preach on passages of the Christian and Hebrew scriptures, I do not worship them by treating the translations or manuscripts as "infallible" – or stoop to such a transparent way of privileging my interpretation over any other. I apply the many understandings of textual criticism not to undermine but to understand this collection of human experience and wisdom about the search for and experience of God. As a pastor, I don’t threaten children or adults with hell or any other kind of punishment, though I have many times personally and corporately experienced the power of God’s forgiveness in Jesus the Christ.
I am not planning anyone’s demise in Hell, as Hitchins claims I am. I am a follower of the Way of Jesus the Christ because I have, since before and long after I was 9 years old, repeatedly experienced in myself and witnessed in others the transforming power of the new life an experience of Christ's presence makes possible. For me, and for the community of Christ-followers with whom I am privileged to serve, our experience of the religion of Christianity, not merely in our own time but for many generations preceding us, has been a calling to live in ways that recognize our lives and the lives of others as a gift from God. We experience this faith practice intellectually and spiritually. The most common expression of our faith is our daily response to God’s call to relinquish a subjective delusion and empathize (in thought and action) with the human community.
That we or other followers of Christ sometimes get this maddeningly and sinfully wrong does not stop us from daily striving to keep faith with God and with each other. That is the leap we make every day. For us, the doctrine of the atonement does not so much represent a gruesome get-out-of-jail-free card as it does an invitation to see our lives as a sacrifice of love to others – particularly to others in need. Every Sunday, we gather not “to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness” (p. 6), but to celebrate life itself as a magnificent gift we can choose to offer to others – and thereby to God.
Hitchens joins a long line of prophets, priests and believers (notably Isaiah and Jesus) in naming some of the sins of the church. His conclusion that these sins constitute sufficient rationale that “religion poisons everything” betrays his own myopic hubris and naiveté concerning the human capacity of evil and goodness. He is, after all, a reporter of human suffering, and claims some mythic objective stance from which to judge the compass of human striving for knowledge and understanding. He mistakes inquiry for wisdom, and does not practice or value the very real need for empathy in his writing.
Here are some quotes from other reviews of the book I found particularly interesting:
I write in the book [I Don't Believe in Atheists] that not believing in God is not dangerous. Not believing in sin is very dangerous. I think both the Christian right and the New Atheists in essence don't believe in their own sin, because they externalize evil. Evil is always something out there that can be eradicated. For the New Atheists, it's the irrational religious hordes. I mean, Sam Harris, at the end of his first book, asks us to consider a nuclear first strike on the Arab world. Both Hitchens and Harris defend the use of torture. Of course, they're great supporters of preemptive war, and I don't think this is accidental that their political agendas coalesce completely with the Christian right.
…I think part of the problem is people who create a morality based on their own experience, which is what of course the New Atheists and the Christian fundamentalists have done.
…I think people who start dividing the world into us and them fail to have empathy.
…I'm not a cultural relativist. I don't think that if you live in Somalia, it's fine to mutilate little girls. There is nothing wrong with taking a moral stand, but when we take a moral stand and then use it to elevate ourselves to another moral plane above other human beings, then it becomes, in biblical terms, a form of self-worship. That's what the New Atheists have, and that's what the Christian fundamentalists have.
(Chris Hedges, in a March 13, 2008 interview with Charly Wilder on Salon.com)
Of this last objection, at least, Hitchens seems well aware, and he devotes an entire chapter to arguing strenuously that both the Nazis and the Communists were effectively religious and effectively theocratic, their secular experiments poisoned by religion. But with this move he begins sawing off the very branch he occupies, since if faith tends to infect even secular politics, then what separates Hitchens from his religious enemies?
The absence of ideology, he would doubtless claim, and the commitment to skepticism and humanism, "free thought" and above all Science. But Science is not a moral teacher, and Hitchens is nothing if not a moralist, passionately invested in such notions as universal human rights, the wastefulness of violence, the particular inviolability of children, and so forth. Where he finds these principles, I am uncertain, but then he seems to be perplexed as well, given how quickly his attempt to apply evolutionary theory to the thorny problem of abortion collapses into unfortunate-sounding appeals to "creative destruction" and "the pitilessness of nature."
This detour into Social Darwinism is mercifully brief, and for the most part Hitchens hews faithfully to Thomas Jefferson's famous attempt to carve all the miracles out of the Gospels and leave the ethical teaching intact. I do not mean to give offense in calling Hitchens a quasi-Christian moralist, but in his better moments that is what he plainly is—a true believer in the branch of the Enlightenment tradition that is epistemologically materialist but otherwise takes its cues from Christianity. The trouble is that this two-step contains a certain contradiction, which is why liberalism has tended to lurch in one direction or another ever since—toward a spineless relativism on the one hand or a scientistic utopianism on the other, with New Testament morality the first thing to be jettisoned in either case.
(Ross Douthat – The Claremont Institute for the study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, July 9, 2007)
What Hitchens really wants to toss into the pyre is religious coercion, whether it is parents scaring children into belief with the idea of Hell, American religious groups attempting to ban stem cell research or foist creationism into the classrooms, the Catholic Church bewailing that condom-use is worse than AIDS, or the Islamic fanatics who are trying to impose their more militant brand of religion on the rest of the world.
…Hitchens closes his book with a chapter called "The Need For a New Enlightenment," in which he asks us to eschew blind credulity; to resolve our ethical dilemmas not with outmoded religious texts but with the literature of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Schiller and Dostoyevsky; to pursue unfettered scientific inquiry; and to divorce sexual life from fear and tyranny. Well over a century ago, the German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called for a similar new enlightenment, yet the century that followed his was plagued by blind credulity which in turn hoisted dangerous wannabe demigods to the helms of several nations.
Today, when our personal freedoms are stronger than ever, we are seeing a resurgence of this dangerous credulity.
…Hitchens' subtitle, while catchy, is misleading. It is a statistical fact that the majority of religious people support the separation of church and state and practice their religion in an innocuously personal way. Religion also enriches people's lives and gives them hope in their darkest moments. When Hitchens says religion "poisons everything" or is a "threat to human survival," he is only half right. He certainly gives us egregious examples of religious people or religious teachings that would cause any sensible person to recoil. But one wonders how much of what Hitchens takes to task is religion as a motive or religion as an excuse.
— Jeremy Carlos Foster (jcarlosfoster@gmail.com)
Flak magazine
As a deconstructionist, Hitchens presents some well-worn arguments that monotheistic faith is based on fables used to explain a pre-scientific understanding of human existence as if he discovered them. He presents the argument that the story of the woman taken in adultery in John 8 and the ending of Mark are not found in the earliest manuscripts as “shocking” (p. 122) and “astonishing” (p. 142). Yet even translations of the New Testament published by conservative publishing houses have acknowledged these facts in the texts themselves for decades. Hitchens, who only quotes the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, apparently did not know this until he read Bart Ehrman, who Hitchen’s credits with the “astonishing finding” of the short ending of Mark (in Ehrman's 2005 book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.).
Other reviews comment on similar factual blunders, or on Hitchens’ presentation of editorial gloss as fact in this work purported to be a paean to reason, Truth, and enlightened discourse. Which raises a problem when considering Hitchens’ other arguments and factual claims, covering a huge swath of human history, theology, and scientific inquiry. From a macro perspective, his argument that religious expression has been tainted with atrocity in the course of human history sounds plausible enough. Yet to leap with Hitchens to the conclusion that all religious expression must be so tainted (the thesis of his book) requires faith that his patchwork anecdotal claims are both representative and accurate. And close examination of many of these claims would strain all but the most blind faith.
His commentary on the Hebrew and Christian scriptures "covers" a bare 26 pages. The Qur’an gets another 13 pages. Søren Kierkegaard examines the story of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) in over 100 pages of his 1843 book, Fear and Trembling. Hitchens claims to cover the “plain meaning of this frightful story” in a paragraph. In this, Christopher Hitchens shares far more in common with Christian fundamentalists than he cares to acknowledge (and who for him represent the sum total of Christian experience). Here lies Hitchens’ argument’s greatest flaw in rationale: straw-man arguments can only be a strong as the version of their adversary’s claim they attempt to undermine.
As a Christian pastor and theologian, I don’t need an atheist to make me aware of the misdeeds of the church throughout history. Nor do I need him to point out for me the discoveries of scriptural textual scholarship, criticism and archaeology. Hitchens trots forward the archaeological research works of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (page 102) as evidence that the "Mosaic myths" of the Exodus and conquest of the promised land "can be safely discarded". I have read their books with fascination. They have enriched my reasoned faith in God and in the patchwork stories of generations of people who have sought to know and worship God and serve each other in love. I have used Bart Ehrman’s books on New Testament textual criticism in my sermons at Skyline UMC. So many of the “show-stoppers” Hitchens employs as proof that religion and the "god" of religion are no longer useful in a technologically advanced world are for me but another sign that the church is a curious incarnation of the divine and humanity at our best and worst.
Here’s an amazing news flash for anyone convinced by Hitchens’ anecdotal arguments: religion is neither the cause nor the cure for the human capacity of evil and of goodness. Neither is religion some monolithic reality, in its bewildering variety of expressions and practices throughout human history. It can claim no monopoly on morality or truth, or freedom from error. What it can demonstrate is a vast collection of human experience of love, truth, and striving after the ever-elusive goal of escaping the bounds of self in search of unity with a reality that encompasses and transcends the mystery of life.
A man of letters can surely appreciate the power of metaphor where the sum of observable facts cannot begin to do justice to the reality to which they only hint. Religion is itself a grand metaphor – a collaboration of the human tribe throughout time that persists not merely because of our desire for spiritual comfort but precisely because of our insatiable thirst for knowledge and inquiry. No human discipline or tradition holds a monopoly either on epistemology or pedagogy, including science, reason, art or any other human expression of understanding and contemplation. That Hitchens claims that his own pedagogy and experience qualify as the pinnacle of human understanding seems more than a little absurd – and dogmatic.
At times, he asks to be left alone. For the most part, Hitchens lives in an imaginary world where it would be possible to divorce human understanding from religious experience and understanding. He frequently resorts to name-calling (“stupid” and “boobie” are his favorite epitaphs for anyone who disagrees with his assessment of religious experience, which he repeatedly boils down to a fear of death). Which brings me to a final point.
Christopher Hitchens wears his personal religious experience like some chest of cub scout achievement awards, which he believes gives him the street cred to critique Christian Protestantism, in particular, from within. That his grandmother was Jewish does not, however, give him some sort of inside track on understanding religious experience, any more than does his abandonment of the Anglican expression of Christianity at the age of 9 (when his tutor, Mrs. Jean Watts, overstepped her understanding of theology on a nature walk – see pages 1-3). Basing his understanding of Christianity on his dogmatic (his claims to the contrary notwithstanding) re-reading of anecdotal history and a 9-year old experience of Anglican faith is like calling his baptism into the Greek Orthodox Church in order to marry his first wife a conversion.
That Hitchens' argument with religious excess is justified goes almost without saying. As a Christian ordained minister, I fight against misogyny, bigotry, racism, homophobia, and nationalism that masquerade as religiosity. Though I treasure, study, and regularly preach on passages of the Christian and Hebrew scriptures, I do not worship them by treating the translations or manuscripts as "infallible" – or stoop to such a transparent way of privileging my interpretation over any other. I apply the many understandings of textual criticism not to undermine but to understand this collection of human experience and wisdom about the search for and experience of God. As a pastor, I don’t threaten children or adults with hell or any other kind of punishment, though I have many times personally and corporately experienced the power of God’s forgiveness in Jesus the Christ.
I am not planning anyone’s demise in Hell, as Hitchins claims I am. I am a follower of the Way of Jesus the Christ because I have, since before and long after I was 9 years old, repeatedly experienced in myself and witnessed in others the transforming power of the new life an experience of Christ's presence makes possible. For me, and for the community of Christ-followers with whom I am privileged to serve, our experience of the religion of Christianity, not merely in our own time but for many generations preceding us, has been a calling to live in ways that recognize our lives and the lives of others as a gift from God. We experience this faith practice intellectually and spiritually. The most common expression of our faith is our daily response to God’s call to relinquish a subjective delusion and empathize (in thought and action) with the human community.
That we or other followers of Christ sometimes get this maddeningly and sinfully wrong does not stop us from daily striving to keep faith with God and with each other. That is the leap we make every day. For us, the doctrine of the atonement does not so much represent a gruesome get-out-of-jail-free card as it does an invitation to see our lives as a sacrifice of love to others – particularly to others in need. Every Sunday, we gather not “to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness” (p. 6), but to celebrate life itself as a magnificent gift we can choose to offer to others – and thereby to God.
Hitchens joins a long line of prophets, priests and believers (notably Isaiah and Jesus) in naming some of the sins of the church. His conclusion that these sins constitute sufficient rationale that “religion poisons everything” betrays his own myopic hubris and naiveté concerning the human capacity of evil and goodness. He is, after all, a reporter of human suffering, and claims some mythic objective stance from which to judge the compass of human striving for knowledge and understanding. He mistakes inquiry for wisdom, and does not practice or value the very real need for empathy in his writing.
Here are some quotes from other reviews of the book I found particularly interesting:
I write in the book [I Don't Believe in Atheists] that not believing in God is not dangerous. Not believing in sin is very dangerous. I think both the Christian right and the New Atheists in essence don't believe in their own sin, because they externalize evil. Evil is always something out there that can be eradicated. For the New Atheists, it's the irrational religious hordes. I mean, Sam Harris, at the end of his first book, asks us to consider a nuclear first strike on the Arab world. Both Hitchens and Harris defend the use of torture. Of course, they're great supporters of preemptive war, and I don't think this is accidental that their political agendas coalesce completely with the Christian right.
…I think part of the problem is people who create a morality based on their own experience, which is what of course the New Atheists and the Christian fundamentalists have done.
…I think people who start dividing the world into us and them fail to have empathy.
…I'm not a cultural relativist. I don't think that if you live in Somalia, it's fine to mutilate little girls. There is nothing wrong with taking a moral stand, but when we take a moral stand and then use it to elevate ourselves to another moral plane above other human beings, then it becomes, in biblical terms, a form of self-worship. That's what the New Atheists have, and that's what the Christian fundamentalists have.
(Chris Hedges, in a March 13, 2008 interview with Charly Wilder on Salon.com)
Of this last objection, at least, Hitchens seems well aware, and he devotes an entire chapter to arguing strenuously that both the Nazis and the Communists were effectively religious and effectively theocratic, their secular experiments poisoned by religion. But with this move he begins sawing off the very branch he occupies, since if faith tends to infect even secular politics, then what separates Hitchens from his religious enemies?
The absence of ideology, he would doubtless claim, and the commitment to skepticism and humanism, "free thought" and above all Science. But Science is not a moral teacher, and Hitchens is nothing if not a moralist, passionately invested in such notions as universal human rights, the wastefulness of violence, the particular inviolability of children, and so forth. Where he finds these principles, I am uncertain, but then he seems to be perplexed as well, given how quickly his attempt to apply evolutionary theory to the thorny problem of abortion collapses into unfortunate-sounding appeals to "creative destruction" and "the pitilessness of nature."
This detour into Social Darwinism is mercifully brief, and for the most part Hitchens hews faithfully to Thomas Jefferson's famous attempt to carve all the miracles out of the Gospels and leave the ethical teaching intact. I do not mean to give offense in calling Hitchens a quasi-Christian moralist, but in his better moments that is what he plainly is—a true believer in the branch of the Enlightenment tradition that is epistemologically materialist but otherwise takes its cues from Christianity. The trouble is that this two-step contains a certain contradiction, which is why liberalism has tended to lurch in one direction or another ever since—toward a spineless relativism on the one hand or a scientistic utopianism on the other, with New Testament morality the first thing to be jettisoned in either case.
(Ross Douthat – The Claremont Institute for the study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, July 9, 2007)
What Hitchens really wants to toss into the pyre is religious coercion, whether it is parents scaring children into belief with the idea of Hell, American religious groups attempting to ban stem cell research or foist creationism into the classrooms, the Catholic Church bewailing that condom-use is worse than AIDS, or the Islamic fanatics who are trying to impose their more militant brand of religion on the rest of the world.
…Hitchens closes his book with a chapter called "The Need For a New Enlightenment," in which he asks us to eschew blind credulity; to resolve our ethical dilemmas not with outmoded religious texts but with the literature of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Schiller and Dostoyevsky; to pursue unfettered scientific inquiry; and to divorce sexual life from fear and tyranny. Well over a century ago, the German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called for a similar new enlightenment, yet the century that followed his was plagued by blind credulity which in turn hoisted dangerous wannabe demigods to the helms of several nations.
Today, when our personal freedoms are stronger than ever, we are seeing a resurgence of this dangerous credulity.
…Hitchens' subtitle, while catchy, is misleading. It is a statistical fact that the majority of religious people support the separation of church and state and practice their religion in an innocuously personal way. Religion also enriches people's lives and gives them hope in their darkest moments. When Hitchens says religion "poisons everything" or is a "threat to human survival," he is only half right. He certainly gives us egregious examples of religious people or religious teachings that would cause any sensible person to recoil. But one wonders how much of what Hitchens takes to task is religion as a motive or religion as an excuse.
— Jeremy Carlos Foster (jcarlosfoster@gmail.com)
Flak magazine
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