Meditation on community and sense of place

I live in Indiana, and have for over nine months now. It's my second tour of duty in the Midwest, as I went to college in Holland, MI, a couple hours north and west of here. I love the people of this congregation and of this community, and I can honestly say I'm glad to be here. But I'm not a Midwesterner; and however long I stay here, I may never be.

I remember talking about that in a sermon one time while I was still in Grand Lake; Trinity Church in the Pines may have been in the Colorado Rockies, but there really weren't all that many of the congregation who were true Coloradans. More of them were Midwesterners who had retired there or who spent the summers there. I remember telling them that I knew I'd never really qualified as a Midwesterner because I still didn't get Garrison Keillor—and I ended up with one of our part-time members (born and raised Columbus, Ohio) taking half an hour and more after the service patiently and earnestly trying to correct the problem. Tell truth, it's a couple years on, and I'm back in the Midwest, and you know what? I still don't get Garrison Keillor.

It probably doesn't help that even nine months on, I continue to get the occasional amazed comment that we actually moved from Colorado to Indiana, usually accompanied by comments about how beautiful Colorado is. I tell them that with all the trees dying from the mountain pine beetle, it was a lot less beautiful than it had been when we moved there, and that it's really a relief to my soul to be back someplace where the trees are all alive—which is true, and it makes sense to people; when I follow that up by pointing out that at least here, we have the lakes, and then note that it's nice to have a big grocery store, a Lowe's and a Walmart in town, that's usually enough to satisfy them, and we can move on to talking about other things. But none of that is the real reason why we were happy to make the move.

The real reason has much more to do with something Larry Bacon said during my last year there: "I liked Grand Lake a lot better before I moved here." I had to agree with him. It was a beautiful place with a lot of people I enjoyed; what it wasn't was a community in any functional sense. It was, rather, a lot of little cliques who didn't get along, producing constant infighting between and among the mayor, the town council, the Chamber of Commerce, various business owners, the recreation district, and pretty much anybody else with any sort of stake in the area. John Pritchard once said wryly that the problem with the town was that the original settlers hadn't built in the valley, they'd built on the hills on either side so they could shoot across at each other, and it had been that way ever since. Unfortunately, rather than being an agent of God's reconciliation in the community, the church tended rather to reflect its divisions, at least in its decision-making. (To its credit, in the ordinary life of the congregation, it was a remarkably cohesive group given that half its people were only there 3-5 months out of the year.) It may not be as scenic here, but it's a strong functional community for all its challenges, and that's a wonderful change.

Sara tells people that the big thing we learned from our five years in Colorado is that scenery isn't everything, and that's a true thing; but for me, it isn't the big thing. For me, I think the big thing I learned has more to do with my sense of place. I've been thinking about this ever since I posted on "sense of place and the '08 election" a month ago. I think of myself, broadly speaking, as a Westerner; I don't have deep roots in any one town in the Western US, but that's where I've spent most of my life (well, that and just across the Canadian border), and the cultures of the rural and small-town West are where I feel most comfortable. It's not a matter of conservative vs. liberal, either; as it happens, I'm probably no less conservative than most folks here in northern Indiana, but it's different. I don't know that I could define all the differences in mindset and expectations, but they're there and I can sense them. I grew up in the West, in the land of mountains and great distances, and it shaped me, and it shaped my sense of where I belong.

At the same time, though, as I noted in that previous post, I also grew up with the sense that the particular place where I belonged was not a location but a community—or rather, two communities: the Navy and the church. I didn't keep the immediate connection to the Navy, since God didn't call me into the chaplaincy (I still feel that connection, but more distantly, as a part of my heritage), but the church has continued to be my home; and then, of course, in getting married and having children, home has become wherever Sara and the girls are. Home, in other words, is not primarily about where but about who; my sense of place is less about the location in which I live than it is about the community of which I am a part. I think I might have known that before we went to Colorado, but at the time, Sara still didn't think I could be content living someplace without mountains, and at the time, she may well have been right—I hadn't really learned that lesson. Now, I have; and while I still have the mountains in my soul, I can be content living without them. Indeed, I've learned that as beautiful as they are, they aren't a healthy place for me to live, because they work against true community, and I need the beauty of community (for which they are a hostile environment) more than I need their beauty.

So in a way, maybe I did move for scenery after all: I traded physical beauty for spiritual and emotional beauty, and I do not regret the trade. Even if I never feel like Indiana is truly my home, if I always feel that this church is my home, I will be well content.

The only answer

Is it just me, or has this been a rough decade? We’ve seen serious hurricane seasons return with a vengeance, giving us the likes of Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike; we’ve seen the representatives of a virulent, malignant strain of Islam take terrorism to a whole new level, beginning with the 9/11 attack on America; along with that, we’ve seen the government of Iran actually get worse, which would have seemed hard to believe before we were introduced to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the return of expansionist Russia; and now we’re seeing a storm of a different kind tear through our financial institutions, leaving us holding our collective breath to see which will stand and which will fall.

And though it’s now receded into memory, we also saw the worst natural disaster in human history, the Asian tsunami of December 26th, 2004, which killed some 273,000 people. It seems strange to think that such a gargantuan event should be out of sight, out of mind, given the instantaneous response it provoked at the time; from children setting up tsunami-relief lemonade stands to Jay Leno selling a white Harley covered with celebrity signatures on eBay—a Houston company bought it for $810,000 to sit in the atrium of their headquarters—to offers of foreign aid from the U.S. government to large grants from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and agencies of other denominations, people all across America snapped into action to offer assistance, and in that we only mimicked what the rest of the world was already doing. To be sure, there were also many who took advantage of the situation to line their own pockets, but on the whole, the collective response was one of which the human race could be proud.

Of course, there was another response as well, from professional opinion-givers—pundits, authors, writers, Ph.D.s, preachers, and others of that sort—seeking to turn the situation to their rhetorical advantage; and in the West, at least, most such commentary revolved around religion. As Presbyterian pastor and writer Jim Berkley, who happens to be a friend of mine, noted with some exasperation, it seemed that the secular press had all of a sudden discovered the problem of evil—and assumed that the discovery was equally sudden for the church. The novelist and critic James Wood, writing in the Manchester Guardian that following January, wrote, “If there is a God with whom we can communicate, who (sometimes) hears our prayers, why does He not hear our suffering? Or why does He hear our suffering and do nothing about it? Theology has no answer, and never has had.” A few days before, Guardian columnist Martin Kettle had written a column titled “God and the Tsunami” which was, essentially, an 860-word elaboration of that same assumption, concluding with the question, “Are we too cowed now to even ask if the God can exist that can do such things?”

It’s worth pointing out that there’s one important difference between Wood’s column and Kettle’s: Kettle seemed to think that atheist science provides a perfectly acceptable answer for the tsunami, while Wood understood that it doesn’t. As he noted, such an approach “can tell us how the world works, but cannot answer the eternal metaphysical wail: why do we suffer so?” Both, however, assumed that the tsunami justified them in their atheism, for surely Christianity can offer no worthwhile explanation.

Unfortunately, as little as I like to admit it, the views on the tsunami offered by many Christians in the weeks after this disaster didn’t do much to challenge Kettle and Wood in their assumption. Why is it that every time something big and nasty happens, someone will inevitably jump up and pronounce it to be God’s judgment on the victims? It’s utterly beyond me. In Scripture, every time God is going to judge someone, he sends prophets before it happens, both to give them a chance to repent and to ensure that they recognize his judgment when it comes. I don’t recall there being any prophets predicting judgment on Asia, nor do I understand why some people are so quick to anoint themselves prophets of judgment after the fact; and if God hasn’t given you the gift of prophecy, that’s really not something you should be pronouncing on.

Of course, that sort of “God is judging Asia” talk was far from the only reaction out there. Others, for example, seized on the relief efforts of Christian churches and organizations, and on the opportunity tsunami relief seemed to provide for missionaries and the indigenous church in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and India, to proclaim that God allowed the tsunami in order to create these opportunities, as if the chance for people to give money justified even one death, let alone 273,000; and even if this does boost evangelistic efforts in Asia, couldn’t that have been accomplished without the loss of life? There is no doubt truth here, that God will bring good out of this calamity, but when it’s offered as an explanation, as a justification, for such pain and suffering . . . well, that strikes me as blasphemous and obscene.

The issue here is one that the great journalist and wit H. L. Mencken identified when he wrote, “For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, easy to understand, and wrong”; and unfortunately, those are the sort of solutions, the sort of answers, to which we tend to gravitate. For Christians, it seems to boil down to, “God is good, therefore this must really be good in some way.” Obviously, atheists don’t have that particular issue, but even the Guardian’s tag team that I mentioned earlier show signs of this. For Martin Kettle, an atheist of a scientific bent, the tsunami allowed the easy dismissal of Christian claims and a relatively easy affirmation of an atheist scientific view, for science can explain it and religion can’t. James Wood, being a literary type, was able to see that the explanation science offers isn’t adequate to our needs, so he said, “This sort of event proves that we need literature to express our feelings”—as if that was any more adequate.

The difficulty we have finding a satisfactory explanation for such an event as the tsunami, or the abuse of a child, or 9/11, or any of the other myriad ways in which human and natural evil devastate lives, should lead us to ask whether an explanation is really what we want. After all, let’s suppose that someone came along and offered an explanation of evil which really was sufficient, which really did explain everything in a satisfactory way, with no holes in it. What would be the cost of such an explanation? What would that mean? It would mean that evil is explainable, that it’s understandable; and for that to be the case, it would have to be part of the natural order, part of the necessary structure of the world as God made it. Put another way, for us to be able to offer an answer for why evil happens, evil would have to make sense, which would mean it would have to be in some way necessary to the proper order of things; which would mean that this world was flawed from the beginning, and that God deliberately created it flawed. It would mean that we would never be able to get away from evil, that evil cannot be defeated; it would mean that the people who say that good cannot exist without evil would be right, and thus that evil, too, is eternal. That, it seems to me, would be far too high a price to pay for any mere explanation.

When once we see this, we realize that we could either have a world in which we can find a rational answer to the problem of evil, or we could have a world in which the final defeat and total destruction of evil is a possibility; and it is the consistent testimony of Scripture that the latter is the world we have. Scripture doesn’t offer any sort of philosophical explanation for evil, because it offers no compromise with evil at all, only unrelenting denunciation of evil in all its forms. Those who seek to explain why God would allow the tsunami should remember the words of Jesus in Luke 13 about another natural disaster, the collapse of a tower in Jerusalem, which killed 18 people; not only did he re­fuse to offer an explanation, he challenged the popular idea that their deaths were God’s judgment on them. Trying to make sense of evil is our project, not God’s, and thus it’s ultimately futile. Evil doesn’t make sense, it can’t be rationally explained, because it doesn’t belong to the world God made; it’s fundamentally alien to the way things are supposed to be, and so it’s fundamentally inexplicable.

Does this mean that our faith has no answer to offer us for the problem of evil? Does this mean that God has no answer? No! Indeed, he offers us the only real answer possible: he offers us himself. Thus it is that when Habakkuk offers his complaint at the evil God allows, what is God’s response? “There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and it does not lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. . . . The righteous live by their faith.” The apostle Paul then picks this up in Romans 1, applying it to the gospel of Jesus Christ: it is through Jesus, by faith in Jesus, that the righteous live by faith. It is through faith in a God who doesn’t try to fob us off with explanations, as if such thin soup would really make our lives any easier or any better, but instead comes down to endure evil with us, and ultimately to defeat it by his death and resurrection.

Thus, when James Wood asks, “Why does [God] not hear our suffering? Or why does He hear our suffering and do nothing about it?” he’s wrong in his question, and completely wrong to say, “Theology has no answer, and never has had,” because that’s exactly what Easter is about. God has heard our suffering—he has heard every cry of anguish, felt every blow and every betrayal, and caught every tear in the palm of his hand—and in Jesus Christ, he has done everything about it. In Jesus, he came down to share our suffering with us, drinking that cup to the very dregs. He took the weight of all our sin on his shoulders—the entirety of human evil and human suffering, of all the brokenness and wrongness of the world—and he carried it to the cross, its cruel thorns digging into his forehead, its sharp splinters shredding his back; and there, for the guilt of all the crimes he never committed, he died.

This is God’s answer to evil. He doesn’t explain it, for to explain it would be to dignify it, to give a reason for it, and ultimately to excuse it, when evil is utterly inexcusable; instead, he says, “I have overcome it.” In the resurrection of Jesus, life has defeated death, and love has broken the power of sin, once and for all. Yes, there are still times when the pain of this world drives us to cry out with the Psalmist, “How long, O Lord?”; there are times when we wonder why God is waiting so long to raise the curtain. But we know that at the cross, he turned evil against itself, and on that first Easter, he broke it; and when the time is right, he will complete the victory he won that day. Evil will be banished, and all things will be made new; God will live among us, and he will wipe away every tear from our eyes, for death itself shall die, and grief and sorrow and pain will be no more. This is the promise, and the one who makes it is the beginning and the end, and all that he says is trustworthy and true.

God our keeper

I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.

—Psalm 121 (ESV)

Joyce over at tallgrassworship got me thinking about this psalm with her recent post; it’s one I've been particularly fond of ever since I was inspired by Eugene Peterson’s book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society to preach through the Songs of Ascents (of which this is the second). It’s a psalm for travelers, and thus for all who are betwixt and between; and so I think Joyce is right that it’s one that’s particularly valuable for us to hear in this rather parlous period.

The road is a perilous place. It has ever been thus; that’s why we pray for our snowbirds as they fly north for the summer and back south for the winter. Dangers both dramatic—such as the threat of terrorist attack—and mundane—perhaps an overly worn bolt gone unnoticed by an overworked, overtired mechanic—shadow us as we fly; driving, we bear the risks of mechanical failure, tire damage, and fellow drivers whose weariness, illness, chemical intake, poor reflexes, or simple incompetence make them unsafe behind the wheel. Wherever we go, by land, air, or sea, the weather is always a potential threat. Even in our age, travel has risks.

Even in our age, yes; but it was far more so in the ancient world. To take but one example, ships crossing the Mediterranean bearing cargo typically would not sail around the southern coast of Greece. Instead, they would put in at the port of Corinth, or at Piraeus, the port of Athens, offload all their cargo, carry it across the Isthmus of Corinth, and load it on another ship on the other side to take it the rest of the way. This trade from ships unwilling to sail around Cape Malea and Cape Matapan, the southernmost points of Greece, was the reason Corinth was founded, and the reason for its wealth and power. Now, this was a pretty involved and labor-intensive evolution, but sailors of the time didn’t begrudge it, for their assessment of the treachery of the southern Greek coast was blunt: “Who sails around Malea best make out his will.” For what it’s worth, the captains and crew of today’s big ships apparently feel much the same way: if you go to Corinth now, you will find a canal cut through the isthmus—I’ve stood and looked down into it—full of ships and boats that don’t want to take the southern route.

The hazards at sea, in that time of peace, were mostly those of wind and wave; on land, not only could bad weather be a problem, so could good weather—in the Mediterranean climate, sunstroke and heatstroke are very real dangers. The roads, aside from those built by the Romans, weren’t paved, so there was always the possibility of turning one’s ankle on a loose stone (or having one’s horse or donkey suffer similar injury); and for those on long journeys, the fatigue and anxiety of travel took their toll emotionally and could bring on a breakdown—what ancient writers called moonstroke, because they understood it to come from the effects of exposure to the moon. (That ancient idea is also at the root of our words “lunacy” and “lunatic.”) Finally, there was the greatest threat of all, from robbers who lurked along the road to ambush the unwary traveler.

Now, this psalm may originally have been written simply to reassure the ordinary traveler; but its placement as the second of the Songs of Ascents, the psalms which were sung by pilgrims as they made their way up the road to Jerusalem to worship God at the temple, gives it a particular depth of meaning. As one of the Songs of Ascents, this psalm is talking about a very particular road: the road to the city of God; and that road, the way of pilgrimage, the path of discipleship, is often a perilous and difficult one indeed. It’s difficult because it requires us to leave the ways of the world behind, which we often don’t want to do, and because it calls us to stretch ourselves, to do and be more than we think ourselves capable of doing and being; it’s also difficult because the world doesn’t tend to treat people well who challenge its comfortable assumptions and ways of doing business. On this road, too, fatigue is a very real concern, as is the threat of attack from others; we need help if we’re going to make it through.

The psalmist knows this, and so he lifts up his eyes to the hills, which is a deeply ambiguous act. On the one hand, it was from the hills that danger came, as robbers came down out of their hiding places to ambush travelers on the road. The hills were a source of danger, and a refuge for enemies. At the same time, if the hills the psalmist has in view are those which rise around Jerusalem (as seems likely), then these are not only hills among which robbers live—they are also the hills among which God lives; perhaps, then, we have the psalmist looking at the hills and straining not only to see if there are robbers ahead, but to see if perhaps he can catch his first glimpse of Jerusalem, the holy city, which is his goal. If this is so, then that movement of lifting up the eyes expresses both concern and trust: concern that the hills are the home of the enemy, but trust that God is also there.

Thus to the question, “From where will my help come?” the answer comes quick and sure: “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” I look to the hills and I see danger, I see that I need help and protection, but I also see that my God, who made these hills and everything else, is there to give me the help and protection I need. This is the point the psalmist wants to make, and it’s one he makes in several different ways in this psalm, in the repetition of two key words. First is the repetition of “LORD,” which represents the personal name of God. (It’s translated this way because no Jew would ever pronounce the name of God for fear of violating the commandment against taking his name in vain. Thus, in reading the Scriptures, they would substitute the word Adonai, “Lord,” and our translations do the same thing.) In repeating the name of God—five times in these eight verses—the psalmist evokes, again and again, the work of God, both in creation (he is the one “who made heaven and earth”) and in taking care of Israel. We appeal, the psalmist tells us, to one whose power to help and bless his people is unlimited by anything at all, and whose will to do so has been proven over and over and over again.

This is reinforced in the repetition of “keep” and “keeper,” which together occur six times. “The LORD,” the creator of the universe, the one who made everything just by speaking the word and who upholds everything that is, “is your keeper,” declares the psalmist; the LORD, who is so great and powerful that he holds all creation in the palm of his hand, is concerned about you, and watches over you. Whatever dangers may come, however great they may be, the LORD is there watching over you to guard and protect you. He will keep your foot from slipping; he will be your shade to protect you from the sun; he will guard you from the effects of the moon. “The LORD is your keeper.”

Now, is this a promise that those who follow God will never suffer any affliction? Are we guaranteed never to stumble on the road, never to wear down under the demands of life, never to break down under the anxiety and fatigue we sometimes have to bear? Are we guaranteed never to be attacked, never to be robbed? No, clearly not; we know from our own lives and the lives of others that those who follow God are not exempt from the pain of the world, much though we might wish it were otherwise. The point isn’t that nothing will ever go wrong for us, or that we will never suffer—indeed, the New Testament is clear that those who walk with Jesus are sometimes called to suffer with him—but that whatever may come, we will never be defeated; evil may hurt us, but it will never have power over us or victory in our lives. Jesus didn’t tell the Pharisees that no one would ever harm his sheep, but he did say, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” Similarly, Paul never told the Romans they would avoid “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril”—but he did declare that “in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us,” because nothing can or will ever separate us from his love.

This is why the psalmist promises us, “The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.” In every aspect of life, in all the things you do when you leave home in the morning, in every part of the home to which you return, the Lord is with you to guard and protect you; and though you may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you need fear no evil, for he who has overcome the world is with you, and in him you too will overcome, for he will take care of you. This is what we know as the doctrine of providence, that in every circumstance, however difficult, God is at work to bring about our good. I love the way the Heidelberg Catechism puts this: “I trust [God] so much that I do not doubt he will provide whatever I need for body and soul, and he will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends me in this sad world. He is able to do this because he is almighty God; he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father.” This is the kind of trust we can have in God as our keeper.

Still, trusting God isn’t always easy. Maybe you’ve never felt this way, but there have been times when I was praying and praying, and he just didn’t seem to be paying attention; it’s enough to make you wonder, sometimes, if God’s just on another frequency for a while, maybe listening to the ballgame or something. Against this, the psalmist says, no, “he who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” God’s mind never wanders; he never drops off for a nap, nor does he ever get so busy taking care of the rest of the world that he forgets about you. Yes, there are times when troubles come, and yes, we often wonder why God lets them hang around so long, but even then, he is with us, watching over us and taking care of us; he doesn’t keep us out of the dark times, but he promises to bring us through them. I think the great Catholic mystic Julian of Norwich captured it best when she wrote, “God did not say, ‘You will not be troubled, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted’; but God said, ‘You will not be overcome.’”

This is the promise of Scripture, which we see in this psalm, in Jesus’ words in John 10, and in many other places: “You will not be overcome.” The way of discipleship isn’t easy, because it calls us to turn our backs on a world which is opposed to God and set our face toward his holy city, to live our lives as a pilgrimage toward God. There will be times when our feet slip and we slide off the path into sin, leaving us wondering if we can even get back on our feet; there will be times when we grow weary on the way, and fatigue seems to be too much for us; there will be times when we’re just getting hammered emotionally. But in these times, and in all the greater and lesser difficulties we face as we seek to follow Christ in this life, the psalmist assures us, “The Lord is your keeper; . . . The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.” Through the hard times and the easy times, in big problems and little ones, in all the daily trials and tribulations of life, however important or unimportant they might seem, he is our keeper; and he keeps us not just from up ahead or up above, but from right beside us, where he walks to protect us, and to lead us on.

Suffering and our hope of glory

Has it ever occurred to you how much of what they show on TV is about suffering? I don’t mean the programs, necessarily (though many of them are, too)—I mean the commercials. For one thing, many of them are so bad, they make you suffer . . .

More than that, though, suffering is really what they’re about. First, you have all the drug commercials. “If you suffer from depression . . .” with these grey-lit shots of gloomy, exhausted people—then, after they tell you about the drug, the same people in the sunshine with smiles on their faces. “If you suffer from high blood pressure,” or “high cholesterol,” or whatever—they all boil down to the same thing: Got a problem? Take a pill. Sure, there are side effects, but they aren’t as bad as this, are they?Alongside those, though not as frequent, are the “pay an expert” ads. The ones that still come to my mind, though I haven’t seen them in ages, are ads for “the law offices of Buckland & Shumm” that used to run incessantly during Perry Mason on the Bellingham station. Different places have different lawyers, but the same basic message: has someone hurt you? Sue their pants off. We’ll be happy to take all their money for you, and we’ll even let you have some of it! Also in this category are ads for counseling services and the like, and these I have a lot more respect for; I’ve been through counseling a couple of times myself (I came out still odd, but happier about it), and I know just how much good a good counselor can do. What does concern me, though, is that there’s still the idea here that suffering is a problem which needs to be fixed, and that you need an expert to fix it for you. There are times when that’s true; there are also a good many counselors who are wise enough not to foster that idea when it isn’t; but there are too many more who aren’t.

As well, we have the bread and butter of commercial advertising: Is there a need in your life? Buy our product. Dishwasher soap not getting your glasses clean? Not attractive enough to the opposite sex? Feeling flabby and out of shape? Driving an old, uninteresting car? Losing your hair? Losing your energy? Why suffer? Buy Our Product, and all will be well.

Besides these, I can think of one other type of TV ad that’s all about suffering: political ads. (And no, I don’t primarily mean your suffering, real though that no doubt is.) When it comes to negative political ads, it seems to me there are two basic variants. One, of course, is the “my opponent is scum” ad, like this one from the current Senate race in Minnesota:

The more common form of negative advertising, however, is the “distort the record” ad, which makes all sorts of exaggerated statements about the opponent’s political positions and actions that really boil down to one premise: you’re suffering, and either my opponent is the reason why, or if they win this election, they’ll make it worse. These sorts of ads give us a third response to suffering: if you can’t take a pill or pay an expert to fix it, then find someone to blame. (Just imagine if we combined these with the lawyer ads . . . “Hi, I’m Joe Schmo, and I’m running for Congress. My opponent beats up old ladies and burns down their houses. Vote for me, and after I win, I’ll sue him for millions of dollars on your behalf.” The possibilities are endless.)

All these ads run off the underlying assumption of our society that we shouldn’t suffer, that we shouldn’t have to, and that if we do, something’s wrong—something needs to be fixed, somebody’s going to pay, something has to change. In the most extreme cases, this gives us the euthanasia movement, which tells us that if we’re suffering and it can’t be fixed, we can’t change it, then we shouldn’t want to live anymore. In lesser cases, we’re urged to take a pill, see a specialist, call a lawyer, file a complaint. Behind it all is the idea that a life without serious suffering is the norm, or ought to be, and that we should expect no less; that creates a gap between expectations and reality, which creates stress, which only makes matters worse.

By contrast, the apostle Paul had a very different view of suffering. I don’t imagine he enjoyed it any more than anyone else does, but he didn’t see it as something to be rejected, to be avoided or fixed or blamed on someone else. Look at Colossians 1:24-29:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

“I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.” That doesn’t mean he wanted to suffer, but that in the midst of suffering, as bad as it was, he was able to find joy—not despite his suffering, but in it; he was able to find his suffering a cause for joy. Why? Because he saw a purpose in it, a reason for it, and a benefit to it. He isn’t suffering for no reason, and his suffering isn’t meaningless; he’s suffering for the sake of the Colossians, for the sake of the whole church, and for Christ.

But what purpose, what reason, what benefit, could he have found in his suffering? The answer to that question begins with one key fact: Paul was a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, and there was no doubt in his mind that he was doing what God had called him to do—and he understood all his sufferings, all his afflictions, in the light of that fact. Much that he suffered, of course, was in direct response to that, as his opponents tried multiple times to destroy him (and came very close once or twice); but even those pains which came in the normal course of life, such as the hardships of life on the road, came in the course of a life devoted to serving God. With everything he did focused on following Jesus, he could and did regard all his suffering as suffering for Christ; and so the mission that gave his life meaning also gave meaning to his suffering.

This is why he says, “in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” Paul is not saying here that Jesus’ crucifixion was insufficient for the salvation of his people (and still less that Paul’s own sufferings are necessary to complete that work); rather, he’s drawing on the Jewish concept of “the woes of the Messiah.” In Jewish thought, this was the time of distress and suffering that would precede the coming of the Messiah to put all things right and make all things new; a roughly similar concept in Christian thought is the time of the Tribulation. The idea was that it was necessary to pass through this time in order to enter the kingdom of God. What Paul’s working with here is the thought that there is a definite measure of suffering that must be filled up before Christ will come again, and that in taking on more than his own share of suffering, absorbing more than his share of affliction, he’s reducing the amount that his fellow Christians will have to endure.

This is a strange thought to us (though I would think it must have made sense to the Colossians), but it underscores two key points: first, suffering for Christ is not something to be avoided, but something we need to accept, and even embrace, because when we suffer for Christ, it draws us close to him. Paul makes this explicit in Philippians 3:10, where he writes, “I want to know Christ, the power of his resurrection and the participation in his sufferings, by being conformed to his death.” We cannot experience the power of Christ’s resurrection, which we have through the Spirit of God, if we are unwilling to walk his path of suffering; these two are inextricably linked. As well, if we suffer for Christ, then we suffer with Christ—we do not suffer alone, but in our suffering, we share in his suffering—and so we are drawn closer to him, we come to know him and share in his life in a deeper and more intimate way than we ever could otherwise.

The key is that, in joys and in sorrows, whatever may come, we keep focused on Christ. That’s the example Paul sets us here; and note the way he uses his example to help set the Colossians straight, and bring them back to that focus on Christ. Remember, they’ve fallen in with these teachers who are promising them an experience of God in his glory if they will just obey all their rules and regulations; the teachers are holding up those rules and regulations as the Colossians’ hope of a fleeting experience of glory. Paul points them, and us, to a far greater hope: the true riches of the mystery of God are not locked away from everyone except the select few who can manage to obey him well enough—instead, they’re available to everyone, because the mystery is that God was in Christ, and by his Holy Spirit, Christ is in you. That, Paul says, is the hope of glory: the promise that we can live life, even in this fallen, broken world, in the constant presence of our loving God, and that when death comes, we will be gathered fully into his presence, able fully to experience his glory—and not only to experience it, but to share in it. That’s the hope, that’s the promise, that enables Paul to rejoice in his sufferings, because he knows that whatever he may suffer now as a result of his service to Christ will only contribute to the glory he will experience later; and it’s the hope and promise that enables us to do the same. It’s the promise we were given by Christ himself, who is our sure and certain hope of glory.

For something brighter

Here's some videos by a group I really enjoy, Newfoundland's Great Big Sea. (I don't make expansive claims for the brilliance of their lyrics, but they're Newfoundland folkies at heart, and I like their sound.)

Ordinary Day

Goin' Up

Lukey

Feel it Turn

Everything Shines

Walk on the Moon

And the deal falls apart

Dump the lot of them. Dump the Republicans who voted against it and called their cowardice "conservative"—what, do they think there's going to be a better option to come along?—dump the 95 Democrats in the House who followed them down the rat hole, and dump the House "leadership" of both parties who couldn't get the job done. Along with them, kick the Senate "leadership" to the curb who couldn't even get a vote off. These are the guys who created the problem, and they're the ones who refused to fix it until it came to a crisis, and now they won't put their careers on the line to fix it when it is a crisis? What do we need them for? What good are they?

Update: OK, it appears I was too hard on the House GOP, though I still think they did wrong: it appears Nancy Pelosi was trying to set them up. For all her productive efforts to pull the deal together, she never lifted a finger to get her own party to vote for it. In fact, she did everything possible to make it painless for House Democrats to vote against it. Then, just before the vote, she gave a speech tearing into the GOP, angering and alienating all those Republican Representatives whose votes she'd been soliciting. Clearly, she wanted the bill either to fail—and to be branded a Republican failure—or to pass in such a way that it could be blamed on the GOP as a Republican bill. I'm still very unhappy with the House GOP—again, do they think this failure is likely to lead to a better outcome?—but given that a lot of them really didn't believe in the bill, I can understand why so many voted against it, given the stunts Speaker Pelosi was pulling; and given her behavior, there's no question in my mind that the blame for this one belongs squarely on her shoulders.

At this point, I'm hoping that my pessimism is wrong and that Joseph Calhoun is right:

We are not on the verge of a new depression. The housing bubble collapse in California, Florida and a few other states is not enough to bring down the entire banking system. Investors who made mistakes in these markets should be held responsible and those who navigated the Fed-distorted market should be rewarded for their wisdom and prudence. Enacting the Paulson plan will not allow that to happen and our economy will suffer for it in the long run. The Japanese tried to prop up failed banks in the aftermath of the bursting of their twin bubbles and the result was 15 years of stagnation. Why are we emulating a strategy that is a demonstrable failure? A better alternative would be to allow capitalism to work as it should and stop the interventions of the Fed in the money market. Trust capitalism. It works.

He's a minority voice in his opinion that the economy can get through this without a major infusion of capital; but he could still be right. Here's hoping.

Work ethic

For your amusement . . .

A win-win rescue plan

The biggest mistake the federal government has made with respect to its economic rescue plan has been allowing it to be described as a "bailout." It isn't; rather, it's a plan for the government to interject necessary capital into our financial markets, thereby enabling them to get through this period without collapsing, by buying assets. The problem for the markets is that these assets have dropped in value, but that doesn't mean they have no value; they will generate income for taxpayers while they're in government hands, and assuming they're purchased at a reasonable price, it should be possible at some point in the relatively near future for the government to sell them at a profit. As such, this isn't really a case of the government giving away hundreds of billions of dollars; rather, it's a case of the government investing that money in order to bridge our economy across a difficult period and, ultimately, pay down some of the national debt.

That's why it's good news that a deal appears to be coming together for a clean plan—one that includes additional protections for taxpayers, but not diversions of money to left-wing interest groups; and that's why no less a conservative economist than Larry Kudlow says, "For taxpayers, the bank rescue plan is a win-win-win-win."

Update: a tentative deal appears to be in place despite the efforts of a handful of Democratic senators who crashed the negotiations and began making various additional demands, including the reinsertion of the slush fund for ACORN. Apparently, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid couldn't control his own troops, but the people who were actually empowered to put the deal together found a way to work around them; this was partly due to his opposite number, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who used the power of her office to help get the deal done. If the deal holds and both parties are able to support it, a lot of the credit will also belong to John McCain, who played a significant role in bringing the House Republicans into the process. As Hugh Hewitt says, this deal represents "a reassuring return of purposeful legislating by the Congress."

A thought or two on last night's debate

I could put up a scorecard on the first presidential debate and tell you who I thought won and why, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of point to that; in the first place, there are scads of people doing that already, and in the second place, the only thing that really matters is what the large bloc of undecided voters thought—and I'm definitely not in that category.

There were, however, a couple things that occurred to me that might be worth mentioning. The first is that the real effect of these debates is in the takeaway moments; the big ones, of course, are the major gaffes and the knockout blows, and there weren't any of those in this debate either way, but there will still be moments that stick in people's minds. For my money, the ones from this debate will favor John McCain:

So let me get this right. We sit down with Ahmadinejad, and he says, “We’re going to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth,” and we say, “No, you’re not”? Oh, please.

(thanks to Jennifer Rubin for the text; followed, as Noam Scheiber noted, by Barack Obama letting it drop)

“You don't do that. You don't say that out loud.” (re: Sen. Obama's suggestion that we should strike our enemies in Pakistan without the knowledge of the Pakistani government)

“I've got a bracelet, too.”

“John is right/Sen. McCain is right.”

On that score, I think the long-term effects of this debate will favor Sen. McCain, whatever the instant reactions might be. The other thing that occurred to me is that eight years ago, one of the things that seemed to hurt Al Gore in the debates was that he couldn't find a consistent approach against George W. Bush—he was different every time, unlike Gov. Bush. Looking at the two candidates, I think Sen. McCain found an approach and a tone that will work for him, that he'll be able to maintain across the debates; I'm not so sure that's true of Sen. Obama, and neither is Byron York, at least in one key respect:

Obama was undeniably, and surprisingly, deferential to a man who in the past Obama has said “doesn't get it.” . . .

Here's a prediction: The next time McCain and Obama meet in debate, on October 7 in Nashville, start a drinking game in which you take a big swig every time Obama says, “John is absolutely right.” I'll bet you get to the end of the debate without ever lifting a glass.

I'll bet York is absolutely right; but if he is, if we do in fact see a significantly different approach from Sen. Obama in the next debate (and I would argue that changing that would necessitate/create a significantly different approach), then that will have a negative effect on the Obama campaign as well.

The bottom line here, I think, is that Sen. McCain put Sen. Obama back on his heels, in a reactive position, for most of the debate; I think Sen. Obama handled that pretty well, I think he was an effective counterpuncher in most instances—but I also think that if you get put in that position, you either have to get yourself back on the offensive, which he couldn't do, or counterpunch effectively every time, or it weakens you. I don't know what the immediate popular reaction will be, but for the long term, I think the Obama campaign has been weakened, at least a little, by this debate.

Jesus Brand Spirituality: Reclaiming the pilgrims' path

OK, so when I said, "I hope to get the post on the first chapter up in the next day or two," I should have said "a week or two (or three)" . . . sorry about that. I'm too easily distracted, I guess. That's too bad, because the first chapter of Jesus Brand Spirituality, "Reclaiming the Pilgrims' Path," sets out the book's overall agenda and approach, and does so in admirable fashion.

I have only one significant objection, and I'll begin with that, both in order to get it out of the way and because it deals with Ken Wilson's very first page: I don't agree with his statement of the problem. He starts off by saying,

Jesus wants his religion back. And he wants it back from the orthodox, the Bible-believing, and the defenders of faith as much as from anyone else. So it can be for the world again.

Just so we're clear, I'm not objecting to that paragraph, as I understand it. It's strong, bracing language, calculated like a slap in the face or a bucket of cold water to shock the reader to attention, and I think that's undoubtedly necessary for what the book is trying to accomplish. However, the caveat is important, because what this isn't is precise language. What does it mean to say, "Jesus wants his religion back," and why and in what respect does he want it back from his own followers?

In the next paragraph, the Rev. Wilson imagines what it might look like if he were a non-Christian beginning to be interested in Jesus; he writes,

How would I begin to pursue faith today? I'll tell you what would put me off. I'd be repelled by the witch's brew of politics, cultural conflict, moralism, and religious meanness that seems so closely connected with those who count themselves the special friends of Jesus. It's a crowd that makes me nervous. Beneath all the talk of moral values and high principles, I don't think I could get over the hissing sound.

I would be deterred by the impression that the more people organize their lives around Jesus, the more likely they are to become defensive, prickly, and dogmatic about their beliefs. I'd have to stuff my questions, curb my curiosity, and be willing to get with the program. I'd have to mindlessly accept some package deal agreed on by the gatekeepers of orthodoxy—virgin birth, heaven and hell, Jesus as the only way, the Bible as the unquestioned Word of God—where would it stop?

Methinks the Reverend doth concede too much. This is certainly the perception of the church among non-Christians (especially the intelligentsia), and it's the perception of the conservative wing of the church in this country by its liberal wing; but is it fair? I know there are churches like this, but in my own experience (limited, but random enough not to be completely meaningless), I've never come across any; the churches I know fail in other ways and in other directions (many of them in efforts to address precisely this perception among non-Christians in their communities). The perception problem is obviously real and significant, but it seems to me that it might be more gracious not to assume that the perception is correct.

That said, where the Rev. Wilson goes from this point is excellent. I appreciate his use and defense of the word "religion," a word which needs to be rescued from those who oppose it (negatively) to "spirituality"; indeed, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the chapter is the model of religion he lays out, which he takes from Dr. Phyllis Tickle, describing it as

a rope that . . . has three cords: spirituality, morality, and corporeality . . . held together by a casing, like the clear plastic casing that holds the strands of a rope together and keeps the water out. The casing of any religion is the story it tells about the way the world works. . . . Everything else about religion makes sense only in the context of the story it tells about the world.

Though the Rev. Wilson focuses in this book on spirituality, he doesn't elevate it above the other elements, but rather recognizes them as equally necessary and important, and I appreciate that. Indeed, he seems to recognize as well the ways in which these various components overlap and interpenetrate one another; I will be interested to see what he makes of that in future works, assuming God grants him the opportunity to write further.

This is particularly true because I think I see a parallel here that could be fruitful. When I first read the book The Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America a decade ago at Regent, one of the things that struck me was in chapter 7, drafted by the Alan Roxburgh, on "Missional Leadership." The Rev. Dr. Roxburgh describes the typical picture of the life of the individual church this way:

In this series of concentric circles, the inner circle A represents the committed core of a church community. . . . They seek to live out faithful lives but give most of their church time to providing services to those who only attend. . . . Circle A represents people with a genuine commitment to function as bearers of the gospel. But the gospel itself is reduced to the categories of our culture. . . .

The next circle (B), the congregation, includes the core (A). Circle B is composed largely of affiliates who expect services but have minimal ownership. It is a voluntary association of expressive individuals. Again, leadership spends a large part of its time responding to the expectations and needs of these people. . . .

The final circle (C) represents the context. The unchurched and the seekers reside here. Much of the activity in A and B is spent convincing unchurched people to connect with a particular brand of church. . . . The focal energy of leadership is directed toward getting people into the center, A, but the location where the leader expends most of his or her time and energy is in circles B and C. All of this assumes a reductionistic gospel of meeting personal, individualistic needs. This assumption is what generates vendor-type ecclesiologies.

Against this, the Rev. Dr. Roxburgh points us to the truth that the church is a "pilgrim people, moving in and toward the reign of God," and that this is what is really "the center of the church's life and identity"; he proposes therefore that rather than understanding the church as merely a bounded set defined by formal membership and formal roles, we need to understand ourselves as a centered set, with our center being "the gospel's announcement of God's reign that is forming a people as God's new society."

In our pluralistic context, where people search in multiple directions and struggle to understand the nature of Christian life, a centered-set model represents the church as a people on the way toward the fullness of God's reign in Jesus Christ. People are constantly being invited to move toward and into a covenant, disciple community. This kind of centered-set church is open to all who may want to be on this journey. It has a permeability that is open to others since it seeks to draw others alongside and minister to people at every level on the way.

This, it seems to me, sounds quite a bit like the "thought experiment" the Rev. Wilson proposes:

Maybe it's time to adjust some of the conventional assumptions about Christian faith. Maybe the starting point is as basic as people in motion, moving toward Jesus. . . .

Let's imagine ourselves in relation to Jesus—all of us who feel drawn to Jesus in some way—as being neither on the outside of faith looking in, nor on the inside looking out, nor at one of the stages of a predetermined four-stage linear progression of belief.

Instead, let's imagine ourselves at various points in relation to an imagined center, like pilgrims coming from the north, south, east and west and every point in between to a holy city. Only we aren't pilgrims in search of a city so much as pilgrims in search of . . . Jesus of Nazareth. Some of us are here, others there. Some are running, walking, milling about, traveling in groups or singly, doubting or believing—but all of us are within range of his attractive pull. Because we come from different points of origin, we take many paths to our destination. The closer we get to the center, the more our paths converge. But for now, the only concern each of us shares is this: how can we take "one step closer to knowing," one step closer to that center we're longing for?

It strikes me, in comparing these passages, that perhaps Ken Wilson is trying to do the same thing with regard to the spirituality and spiritual theology of the church that Alan Roxburgh, Darrell Guder and the rest of that group were and are trying to do with the corporeal reality of its structures and programs. Certainly when the Rev. Wilson writes, "Jesus brand spirituality is a way of living that Jesus modeled as a fellow pilgrim," it seems reasonable to describe that as a truly missional spirituality; we should be wary of defining his work in terms of someone else's work or agenda, but there seem to me to be real affinities there. As such, those who are attracted by the missional-church movement and its understanding of who we're called to be as the church and how we're called to live, and who are grappling with trying to lead a congregation in that direction, may well find this book particularly valuable.

One further word on the first chapter would seem to be in order, to set up the discussion of the rest of the book: having set up his description of Jesus brand spirituality as a life of pilgrimage toward Jesus, the Rev. Wilson identifies four dimensions to this pilgrimage, four different aspects to the spiritual life.

By "dimensions" I mean aspects of reality . . . the four dimensions I've selected to describe Jesus brand spirituality are active, contemplative, biblical, and communal. . . .

These four dimensions of spirituality are as interdependent as the four space-time dimensions. We separate them to examine them, but as soon as we're done, they reconnect. We must resist the temptation to force-fit these into a preordered path: "First, we take the active step, then the contemplative," and so on. It doesn't work like that. Depending on where we find ourselves on this pilgrimage, we may be drawn to one dimension or the other first or next. But as we move forward into one dimension . . . our understanding of all the others will be affected because they are four dimensions of one reality.

Why these particular dimensions? Because they are integral. Each is an essential part of spirituality—distinguishable in representing a discrete aspect, yet interdependent in affecting and being affected by the others. They also emerge naturally from the spiritual path of Jesus himself.

There is, it seems to me, a lot of wisdom there, though I would add that all of us are probably temperamentally tilted in one direction or another; I'll be interested to see how the Rev. Wilson develops this model and fleshes it out in subsequent chapters.

God our provider

Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” And the word of the Lord came to him: “Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. And after a while the brook dried up,
because there was no rain in the land.

Then the word of the Lord came to him, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days.
The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty,
according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.

—1 Kings 17:1-16 (ESV)

Obviously, that was a different economic crisis for a different reason, but still, it’s a reminder: even in such times, God is still at work providing for his people.

Artwork: “Elijah and the Ravens,” by He Qi

Thirty years of economic history in ten minutes

The value of this video, imho, isn't the McCain/Palin commercial at the end, it's the sheer volume of source material, mostly from the MSM, that's referenced here in mapping out the trail that led us to this point; some of these stories I've seen and posted on (here, for instance), but others were new to me.

HT: The Anchoress, who has an excellent rant on the egregious behavior of the Democratic (and some of the Republican) “leadership” of Congress in this crisis:

I need to first opine that the Democrats yesterday blew my mind with their last-minute addition of 56 billion to the bail-out, their sneaky, slippery attempt to play political games with some of this money—directing it to ACORN (!) - and their subsequent attempt to lie and to blame the GOP—the president—anyone but themselves for not passing a bill which the GOP CANNOT BLOCK. We already know that Nancy Pelosi has no leadership skills except in spite and obstruction—we see she is completely out of her depths here, but Barney Frank’s behavior last night, and his disrespect toward the GOP and the President was particularly egregious in a time of crisis. He behaved like a trapped animal trying to distract the hunters toward anyone but him. Meanwhile Chuck Schumer is unusually, uncharacteristically silent; Barack Obama—except when mentioned by a press pretending he is leading—seems irrelevant to the process and to have no genuine ideas or input, or a desire to lead. All he seems capable of doing is whining about the debate while Rome falls about his ankles. McCain is quite right that the debates would be less urgent if Obama had done the Town Halls McCain had asked for—debates Obama said he’d have “anytime, anywhere” before refusing all of them. I say at this point SCREW the moderated debates that tell us nothing and insist that these candidates town-hall it and speak DIRECTLY to the people who will be most affected by all of this—that would be the ordinary folk. And do the same for Biden and Palin if they debate. And seriously, if there is a debate, it should be on economics, and energy just now, not foreign policy. Speaking of foreign policy, in the midst of all of this, Israel is asking the American president to give a green light to bomb Iran. Imagine having all that on your plate for one day! I don’t know that John McCain is the “perfect” man for the White House, but I’m pretty damn sure at this point that a man with 150 days experience in the Senate, no instincts to lead, a whiny disposition, and a frightening willingness to use the Justice Department as his private thug-corps is the guy we need in the Oval Office in there very serious times. And finally, to end the rant, Charles Krauthammer says we need a few good public hangings re this financial mess. I think—after seeing our “leadership” demonstrate that they haven’t the balls to lead without political cover—we should put them out of their miseries by demanding a few resignations from the leadership of BOTH parties, and both banking committees.

Why we need to get the deal done

Steven Pearlstein lays it all out in the Washington Post as simply and clearly as I've seen yet.

Beldar comments,

When you get two-thirds of the way through it, you'll understand why some things that are getting lots of discussion are not, in fact, big problems, and you'll also understand in at least general terms what actually is the big problem, how very big indeed it is, and why addressing it somehow is so very urgent. . . .

I'm . . . convinced that this is one of those situations where as a nation, we simply cannot allow the quest for the perfect to remain an implacable obstacle to the acceptance of the good, or even the probably mostly okay. On these issues, ninety-nine point something percent of us, including our national leaders, are dilettantes at best. And this is one of those situations in which, in the words of that brilliant economist George S. Patton, "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week."

Hugh Hewitt adds, in his "Memo To House Republicans,"

Here's a shocker: No one likes the risks involved in Paulson 2.0 or the precedent of using so much public money to rescue reckless bankers, both private and semi-private.

But there is a very good chance that (1) it will actually make money for the Treasury and (2) without it the financial crisis will spread and the small businesses of America and the people who own and staff them will be deeply injured. These businesses are the backbone of the economy, and they are in danger. This isn't just a bailout of Wall Street; it is a breakwall for Main Street. . . .

You cannot stand by and watch people's business and savings hemorrhage and expect them to reward you for your purity of purpose and incompetence of execution.

The state of the deal

Here’s what the McCain campaign has to say about the current state of affairs:

To address our current financial crisis, John McCain suspended his campaign and returned to Washington, D.C., today to help build a bipartisan consensus for a proposal that would protect the American taxpayer.

Despite today’s news reports, there never existed a “deal,” but merely a proposal offered by a small, select group of Members of Congress. As of right now, there exists only a series of principles, including greater oversight and measures to address CEO pay. However, these principles do not enjoy a consensus in Congress. At today’s cabinet meeting, John McCain did not attack any proposal or endorse any plan. John McCain simply urged that for any proposal to enjoy the confidence of the American people, stressing that all sides would have to cooperate and build a bipartisan consensus for a solution that protects taxpayers. However, the Democrats allowed Senator Obama to run their side of the meeting. That did not work as the meeting quickly devolved into a contentious shouting match that did not seek to craft a bipartisan solution. At this moment, the plan that has been put forth by the Administration does not enjoy the confidence of the American people as it will not protect that taxpayers and will sacrifice Main Street in favor of Wall Street. The bottom line is that as of tonight, there are not enough Republican or Democrat votes for the current plan. However, we are still optimistic that a bipartisan solution will be found. Republicans and Democrats want a deal that will protect the taxpayers. Tomorrow, John McCain will return to Capitol Hill where he will work with all sides to build a bipartisan solution that protects taxpayers and keeps Americans in their homes.

That’s certainly where the priorities ought to be: to protect responsible taxpayers and let the burden of the crisis fall on those who have been irresponsible (which means, among other things, shooting down Richard Durbin’s efforts to get the irresponsible off the hook at everyone else’s expense); unfortunately, the lobbying dollars are not with the taxpayer, they’re with the same folks whose irresponsibility and bad policies got us into this to begin with, so at the moment, I’m not real optimistic. Still, I think Megan McArdle’s right, we need to make the best deal we can make, even if we don’t think it's a good one; if we don’t, here's what we’re looking at (according to John Podhoretz, anyway):

If a deal isn’t reached by Sunday night, and a bill isn’t signed into law by Sunday night, it is likely we will wake up Monday morning to a market meltdown overseas of a sort the world has never seen—and then we will just wait, mute, until the American markets open. Monday will be an interesting test case: We will see just how much poorer the investing class can get in just one day. And then, a second day. And then, a week. As the whirlwind begins its reaping.

And by “the investing class” he doesn’t just mean the rich; he means all of us who need to save for the future, and have been doing so, and who could watch those savings blow away in the wind from Wall Street. Ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, you have 72 hours; if you get this wrong, they could be, to all intents and purposes, the last 72 hours of your political careers. Use them wisely.

Focus groups are for sissies

So says Andrew Stanton (writer/director of Finding Nemo and WALL-E), anyway—and if you're any kind of Pixar fan, you know Stanton's one of the best things the American movie industry has going for it. During the course of a wide-ranging (and fascinating) interview with Dominic von Riedemann, he made this comment:

I don’t mean this in a negative way, but I don’t think of the audience at all, because I don’t go to see a movie hoping the filmmaker’s second-guessed what I want. I go to see what he wants, because I like his taste and style, and I want to see what he’s going to do next.

The day we start thinking about what the audience wants, we’re going to make bad choices. We’ve always holed ourselves up in a building for 4 years and ignored the rest of the world, because nobody are bigger movie geeks than we are, so we know exactly what we are dying to see with our family and kids. We don’t need other people to tell us that. We trust the audience member in ourselves.

From a different corner of the entertainment industry, Ragnar Tørnquist (the driving creative force behind the adventure games The Longest Journey and Dreamfall) agrees:

You can worry yourself green about what players will and won’t like, you can do focus testing on concepts and characters, you can survey the market and conduct polls, you can identify and follow every new trend, but in the end the only opinion you can truly trust is your own and the opinions of those around you—the people who will spend three, four, five years of their lives working on a project. We’re all gamers, we all want to make—and play—the best game possible, and that’s what directs our decisions every single day.

I'm hard pressed to think of an instance in which anyone—writer, composer, preacher, politician, whatever—achieved greatness by giving people what they already know they want. You might get rich and famous that way, you might achieve some definition of success that way, but you aren't going to make the world a better place that way.

How to fix the financial crisis

Approve the Paulson plan with one, and only one, modification: instead of giving the Treasury Secretary the power to spend $700 billion, hire Warren Buffett to do it.

"I bet they'll make a profit," said Buffett, who pointed out that hedge funds specialising in junk assets were already picking up mortgage-related securities with a view to making profits of 15% to 20%. He said a positive return was feasible if the government ignores the book value of instruments or the original cost to banks and instead pays the prevailing market rates for the bombed out assets.

"They'll pay back the $700bn and make a considerable amount of money if they approach it like that," said Buffett. "I would love to have $700bn at Treasury rates to buy fixed-income securities—there's a lot of money to be made."

Is John McCain recovering his footing?

The statement he offered today suggests so:

I am calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem. We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved. I am directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the commission on presidential debates to delay Friday night’s debate until we have taken action to address this crisis. I am confident that before the markets open on Monday we can achieve consensus on legislation that will stabilize our financial markets, protect taxpayers and homeowners, and earn the confidence of the American people. All we must do to achieve this is temporarily set politics aside, and I am committed to doing so.

As Jennifer Rubin notes, this poses an interesting conundrum for the Obama campaign:

Will Obama follow suit and disrupt his debate prep? It will be hard to say no, yet odd to follow meekly behind McCain’s invitation.

More importantly, this offers perhaps the best hope we have for a solution that will actually get us through the current crisis—especially if Sen. Obama follows suit, but maybe even if he doesn't.

Update: Duane Patterson sums this up nicely.

Thought on faith in trying times

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

—James 1:5-8 (ESV)

[Christ] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.

—Ephesians 4:11-15 (ESV)

I'll be honest, I'm rather discouraged today; there just doesn't seem to be a lot of good news out there. Of course, that's hardly unusual—looking for good news from the world is rather like looking for your next rent payment on the roulette wheel—but it's still got me down. In matters big (a financial crisis created by partisan stupidity that no one on either side of the aisle seems to have any real clue how to fix, but which may yet be exacerbated by yet more partisan stupidity) and small (the Seahawks are off to a bad start this season, both in their play and in their front office's overreaction to it), things just seem to be going wrong all over the place. (Granted, the Red Sox did knock the Yankees out of the playoffs, but that only counts for so much when my own team is on the verge of 100 losses.) Throw in a bad night of sleep, and it's a recipe for a funk.

But God is at work in these times as in any other, and last night when I was up into the wee hours and really starting to get low, he sent me a message, in the form of this YouTube video of one of my favorite groups, the defunct (and much-missed) Jacob's Trouble:

Wind and Wave

(Lyrics are below; the Scriptures, of course, are above.) It was this morning, and is now, an important reminder to me: when I let circumstances get to me, when I let what seems to be an aura of bad news get me down, when I let myself get pessimistic, I'm falling back into allowing myself to be tossed around, buffeted about, and driven this way and that by the winds and waves of circumstances; I'm letting "human cunning" and "craftiness in deceitful schemes" wash me off my foundation and blow me out into the sea of doubt, rather than trusting in God. Granted, the circumstances right now aren't pretty in a lot of respects, and it feels natural to me to expect the worst and then start glooming over it; but I have reason to stand on faith in God, rather than giving myself over to the wind and the wave, because I've seen other bad times (on a personal level, worse times) and he's always brought me and my family through. Our country has seen other bad times, and he's always brought the nation through; God has allowed this "almost-chosen people" to suffer many things, but he's never failed us yet. The worries of the moment do not outweigh the testimony of the past; our hopes and fears for tomorrow are affected by this morning's news, to be sure, but they are not at its mercy, for God by his providence continues to be at work, even through the bad news.

I don't usually repost videos, but this song was another one God used this morning, just to remind me that even when the wind blows hard, he is with us on the road, and his mercy is always for us:

Kyrie

I have reason to trust in God; I have reason to be confident that the struggles of the present moment aren't permanent. I just need to remember that, and to ask him for the wisdom and, yes, the faith I need to rise above those struggles, rather than allowing them to overcome me. And in doing so . . . I feel better already.

Wind and Wave

I needed wisdom on a matter of faith,
So I sought the Lord at his dwelling place—
Hello? Is there anyone home?
He said, "Let him who comes to me ask believing,
'Cause faith is revealing but doubt is deceiving,
You know? Don't you know?"
But I couldn't seem to stand my ground—
I floundered, flailed, and almost drowned;
And as I sank, I thought I heard a sound.

Wind and wave, to and fro, back and forth, stop and go,
Lost in doubt. Am I out or am I safe?
Fire and ice, land and sea. It's up to you, it's down to me.
Will I be eternally weak in faith
On the wind and the wave?

A voice inside me said, "You're on your own!
You blew it once too often, now He's left you alone!"
Oh, no! Please say it isn't so!
So I clung to my feelings, forgot the facts,
'Til I heard the voice of Jesus telling me to relax,
"Let go. I'll take control."
Well, it was tough at first but I obeyed.
I just went limp and then I prayed,
"Please, Jesus, save me from this open grave."

Chorus

Now, I'm not saying that I will never doubt again,
'Cause after all I'm just a man, yeah, yeah.
All I know is if I should doubt again
He'll understand. He understands.

"I will never leave you nor forsake you;
I will always be with you.
I will never leave you nor forsake you;
I will always be with you."

Chorus

Words and music: Steve Atwell, Mark Blackburn, and Jerry Davison
© 1989 Broken Songs
From the album Door into Summer, by Jacob's Trouble

This sounds very familiar

This from a 1979 Atlantic article by James Fallows, who had been one of Jimmy Carter's speechwriters:

Sixteen months into his Administration, there was a mystery to be explained about Jimmy Carter: the contrast between the promise and popularity of his first months in office and the disappointment so widely felt later on. Part of this had to do with the inevitable end of the presidential honeymoon, with the unenviable circumstances Carter inherited, with the fickleness of the press. But much more of it grew directly from the quality Carter displayed that morning in Illinois. He was speaking with gusto because he was speaking about the subject that most inspired him: not what he proposed to do, but who he was. Where Lyndon Johnson boasted of schools built and children fed, where Edward Kennedy holds out the promise of the energies he might mobilize and the ideas he might enact, Jimmy Carter tells us that he is a good man. His positions are correct, his values sound. Like Marshal Petain after the fall of France, he has offered his person to the nation. This is not an inconsiderable gift; his performance in office shows us why it's not enough.

After two and a half years in Carter's service, I fully believe him to be a good man. With his moral virtues and his intellectual skills, he is perhaps as admirable a human being as has ever held the job. He is probably smarter, in the College Board sense, than any other President in this century. He grasps issues quickly. He made me feel confident that, except in economics, he would resolve technical questions lucidly, without distortions imposed by cant or imperfect comprehension.

He is a stable, personally confident man, whose quirks are few. . . .

But if he has the gift of virtue, there are other gifts he lacks. . . .

The second is the ability to explain his goals and thereby to offer an object for loyalty larger than himself. . . .

The third, and most important, is the passion to convert himself from a good man into an effective one, to learn how to do the job. Carter often seemed more concerned with taking the correct position than with learning how to turn that position into results. He seethed with frustration when plans were rejected, but felt no compulsion to do better next time. He did not devour history for its lessons, surround himself with people who could do what he could not, or learn from others that fire was painful before he plunged his hand into the flame.

I worked for him enthusiastically and was proud to join his Administration, for I felt that he, alone among candidates, might look past the tired formulas of left and right and offer something new. . . .

But there were two factors that made many of us ignore these paper limitations. One was Carter's remarkable charm in face-to-face encounters. All politicians must be charming to some degree, but Carter's performance on first intimate meeting was something special. . . . I met very few people who, having sat and talked with Carter by themselves or in groups of two or three, did not come away feeling they had dealt with a formidable man. . . .

Those who are close enough to Carter to speak to him frankly—Powell, Jordan, Rafshoon, perhaps Moore—either believe so totally in the rightness of his style, or are so convinced that it will never change, that they never bother to suggest that he spend his time differently, deal with people differently, think of his job in a different way. Even that handful speaks to him in tones more sincerely deferential than those the underlings use. No one outside this handful ever has an opportunity to shoot the breeze with Carter, to talk with no specific purpose and no firm limit on time.

If he persists in walling himself off from challenge and disorder, Jimmy Carter will ensure that great potential is all he'll ever have. Teaching himself by trial and error, refusing to look ahead, Carter stumbles toward achievements that might match his abilities and asks us to respect him because his intentions be been good. I grant him that respect, but know the root of my disappointment. I thought we were getting a finished work, not a handsome block of marble that the chisel never touched.

Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter aren't the same person, of course; but there really are some strong, and worrisome, similarities between the two of them. Like President Carter, Sen. Obama offers his person to the nation. This is not an inconsiderable gift; but for him, too, his performance in office so far shows us why it's not enough.

HT: Beldar

The Ayers/Obama campaign to radicalize education

Maybe this is why the Obama campaign tried to stop Stanley Kurtz from delving into the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge—they didn't want him telling people what the CAC was all about:

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn). . . .

The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative. . . .

Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin.

Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

The fact that Ayers did plant bombs, and remains unrepentant about doing so, only makes it more of a story; this is why, before a national audience, Sen. Obama and his media subsidiary have done their best to keep it out of sight. It's worth noting, however, that when he was just running in Chicago, Barack Obama offered his work running CAC as a major qualification for office: