Lenten Song of the Week

This isn't the most lyrically deep or complex hymn, to be sure, but in its simplicity it's an excellent one for reflection and prayer--rather like many of the Psalms in that respect. I have a deep fondness for Appalachian folk hymnody, both texts and music, and this is one of my favorites. If you're not familiar with the tune, the link is below.

What Wondrous Love Is This

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul,
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down;
When I was sinking down beneath God's righteous frown,
Christ laid aside his crown for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside his crown for my soul!

To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing,
To God and to the Lamb I will sing!
To God and to the Lamb, who is the great "I AM,"
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing,
While millions join the theme, I will sing!

And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on, I'll sing on,
And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on!
And when from death I'm free, I'll sing and joyful be,
And through eternity I'll sing on, I'll sing on,
And through eternity I'll sing on!

Words: Appalachian folk hymn
Music: Southern Harmony, 1835
WONDROUS LOVE, 12.9.12.12.9

Simply Wright

One of my frustrations as a pastor is that with everything else I need to do, I can't do the reading I wish I could do. As Ecclesiastes says, "Of the making of many books there is no end," and while many that come out each year are of great value, I have neither the time nor the energy to read as many as I'd like to read--or indeed, arguably, as many as I need to read.

It's not a problem unique to me, of course; which is why, I think, God invented journals and review essays. There are a number of periodicals to which I subscribe, and a handful in particular which I find critically important in keeping up with things and highlighting the books I need to make time to read. The most important are First Things and Books & Culture, which you'll find linked over on the left side of the page; not far below them is Touchstone, which describes itself as "a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom — Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox . . . [designed to] provide a place where Christians of various backgrounds can speak with one another on the basis of shared belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds of the Church."

Personally, I find Touchstone a bit more erratic than First Things (and also shorter), but the editors find (or write) and publish some wonderful pieces. In the latest issue, perhaps the best is a review essay on C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity by the Anglican Bishop of Durham, England, the incomparable N. T. Wright. Bishop Wright might just be the perfect person to do this, since like Lewis he's an Englishman, an Anglican, a scholar (though his field is New Testament rather than Renaissance literature) and a writer who recently wrote a small work of popular apologetics, Simply Christian, which can be profitably compared with Lewis' book. (I know this because it's been done.) What's more, Bishop Wright also happens to be extremely good at what he does, and a man of real grace and humility. (I know that from people I know who are friends of his.)

As one would expect, then, he offers an excellent and quite thorough appraisal of Lewis' work, pointing out its great strengths and not sparing its weaknesses. There's no need to recapitulate his points here--go read the article (and give Touchstone some page hits); but I do want to call attention to Bishop Wright's closing paragraphs:

[Despite the book's flaws,] the bee flies, and gets the honey. Credit where credit is due. Lewis himself would have been the first to say that of course his book was neither perfect nor complete, and that what mattered was that, if it brought people into the company, and under the influence (or “infection”) of Jesus Christ, Jesus himself would happily take over—indeed, that Jesus had been operating through the process all along, albeit through the imperfect medium of the apologist.

And, as another imperfect apologist, I salute a great master, and can only hope that in sixty years’ time children yet unborn will say of me that, despite all my obvious and embarrassing failings, I too was used, in however small a way, to bring people under the influence and power, and to the love and kingdom, of the same Jesus Christ.

In a mirror, darkly

Since I don't get HBO, I haven't seen Alexandra Pelosi's documentary Friends of God, though I'd be interested to watch it; at this point, though, I don't know much more than what I read in Michael Linton's post on the First Things blog, On the Square. Linton's post, though, is plenty and enough to spark reflection—mostly grieved reflection, unfortunately. I'm in no position to pass judgment on Pelosi's work one way or the other, but it seems that those of us who call ourselves evangelicals (and really, any serious Christian) ought to take a long, hard look at what she shows us of ourselves. The parking-lot scene Linton cites, in which Pelosi is talking with Ted Haggard and two of his church members about their sex lives, looks particularly painful, and not just because of the subsequent revelations of Haggard's gay infidelity. As Linton puts it,

The possibility that it might be deeply indecent for a Christian minister ever to ask a man to reveal the most intimate nature of his relationship with his wife in front of anyone else—let alone in front of a camera—is apparently not within his ken. And the idea that these men should protect their wives’ privacy and refuse to answer isn’t in their ken either. They boast about their . . . well, you fill in the blank (we’ve all been in locker rooms). It feels so great. It’s all for the Lord. High fives, everybody.

Yeah. For all the fuss many evangelicals make about our country's moral decline, we too often accept the same assumptions and impulses that have driven that decline; as someone put it, instead of being in the world but not of it, too often we manage instead to be of the world but not in it, creating our own little subculture with "Christianized" versions of everything the world has—including, all too often, its misdirected desires. As such, there's all too much truth to Linton's charge that

We, "us," the Evangelicals with the capital E, have become thoughtless, sensualistic braggarts. . . . What doctrinal rigor we might have had has been progressively smothered by sensuality draped with arrogant irresponsibility. We don’t think; we feel. If it feels right, it’s the Lord’s working, and if it’s the Lord’s working, we can be proud of it.

I don't want to beat up on evangelicals; I am one, and I make no bones about it. But we have enmeshed ourselves far too deeply in the culture and system of this world, this present age, and we have come to think far too highly of ourselves. To quote Linton again,

We’ve forgotten the Scriptures and allowed ignorance to characterize our preaching, and delirium our worship. In our confidence in God’s grace, we have become presumptuous in our salvation. And we’ve too often confused salvation in heaven with right voting on earth. We need to change. We need to repent.

We need, I would say, to remember that the true gospel is countercultural and costly; we need to set aside the idea that we can, or should, be comfortable with God. We need to go back to Isaiah 6 and remember the reaction of that great prophet when he really saw the glory and holiness of God: he cried out in terror, for he saw his sinfulness for what it really was. And maybe, just maybe, we need to stop singing "worship" songs about how wonderful we are and put the worms back in our hymnody. May God have mercy on us for our presumption.

Lenten Song of the Week

This being Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, it seemed appropriate to move this to a Lenten theme; and given that, the logical place to start seemed to be with the first hymn we sang at our Ash Wednesday service this evening. (If you aren't familiar with this hymn, check out the Oremus Hymnal website; the link is below.)

Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days

Lord, who throughout these forty days
For us didst fast and pray,
Teach us with thee to mourn our sins,
And close by thee to stay.

As thou with Satan didst contend
And didst the victory win,
O give us strength in thee to fight,
In thee to conquer sin.

As thou didst hunger bear and thirst,
So teach us, gracious Lord,
To die to self, and chiefly live
By thy most holy word.

And through these days of penitence,
And through thy Passiontide,
Yea, evermore, in life and death,
Jesus! with us abide.

Abide with us, that so, this life
Of suffering over-past,
An Easter of unending joy
We may attain at last!

Words: Claudia F. Hernaman, 1873
Music: Day's Psalter, 1563
ST. FLAVIAN, CM

An insurgency divided against itself cannot stand

From the "Things the US Media Won't Tell You" Dept.:

Our Islamicist opponents in Iraq are turning on each other, and their "premier jihadist propaganda tool" has now launched an all-out attack on al-Qaeda. This shouldn't surprise us--one of the best arguments for standing firm in Iraq is that the uneasy alliances among our enemies there can't hold together if we keep the pressure on--but unfortunately, it also shouldn't surprise us that no one in the West is interested in reporting this. Kudos to Nibras Kazimi, a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute, for breaking this story on his blog Talisman Gate; this is the sort of thing we need to know if we're going to have any chance at all to evaluate the situation in Iraq rationally and helpfully.

Wretchard at The Belmont Club picked up on this, via a thread on Small Wars Council in which it's noted that al-Qaeda's actions on the ground have outraged not only fellow jihadists but at least some of the tribes on whose cooperation they have depended. The key for us in Iraq, it seems to me, is to use a sort of large-scale judo on al-Qaeda and on other groups involved in the insurgency, to do everything possible to use their strength against them and assist them in defeating themselves; and if Wretchard's right, that might be just what we're doing. Now might not be a bad time at all to significantly reduce our troop presence, but it's definitely not the time to pull out and abandon the field to our enemies. Stay the course, but sneakily.

Atheism and its discontents

Interesting meditation over on the First Things website by one of their junior fellows, Ryan Anderson, on the question, "Are Atheists Victims of Discrimination?" He concludes that in some ways, yes, they are, but that much of it is self-inflicted (and much of the rest is in reaction to the public bloviations of folks like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Peter Singer); and he ends with this:

Atheist discontent still bears a seed of redemption, though, as it points to the fundamental human longing for community, shared values, and shared lives. That they feel this need goes unfulfilled isn’t surprising, since it’s a large element of what religion is all about. Far from unjustly discriminating, then, believers ought to water that seed by charity and prayers so that its seedling might one day be grafted onto the one true Vine.

Amen.

Song of the Week

Andrew Osenga is probably best known as the guy who replaced Derek Webb with Caedmon's Call; others might recognize his name from his work with Andrew Peterson. To an unfortunately small number of us, though, he is first of all the frontman for The Normals, who released three albums between 1998 and 2002 before breaking up; with strong lyrics and a sound all their own, they naturally weren't a big hit. After all, what do you expect a DJ to do with a song titled "We Are the Beggars at the Foot of God's Door," anyway?

We Are the Beggars at the Foot of God's
Door

We are gathered in cathedrals on a Sunday;
We are shrouded in our pride and lust's despair.
We have heard that You said, go to where your hearts once were,
Trusting we'd arrive to find You there.

We have known the empty senses of a funeral;
We are haunted by the promises of death.
We have asked to see Your face and noticed nothing
But a well-timed honest smile from a friend.

O we of little faith, O You of stubborn grace . . .
We are the beggars, we are the beggars,
We are the beggars at the foot of God's door.

We have grown cold to the kisses of our lovers;
We have rolled the windows up and driven through
The forests of the autumn, the innocence of snow,
The metaphor of Jesus in the dew.

We have known the heated passion of the cold night;
We have sold ourselves to everything we hate.
We're hypocrites and politicians running from a fight;
We've cheated on a very jealous mate.

Chorus

We have known the pain of loving in a dying world,
And our lies have made us angry at the truth--
But Cinderella's slipper fits us perfectly,
And somehow we're made royalty with You.

Chorus

And You have welcomed us in.

Words and music: Andrew Osenga and The Normals
© 2000 Starstruck Music/BMG Songs/Northern Shore Music
From the album Coming to Life, by The Normals

Not a bad appetizer

One of our elders here at Trinity has asked me several times over the last number of months if I'd read David Gregory's book Dinner with a Perfect Stranger. I hadn't, nor did I want to (though I didn't say that--no need to be rude, after all); it struck me as something of a Christian parallel to Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven, just a piece of well-intentioned schlock.

Well, it seems Steve finally decided I'd had long enough, or something, and loaned me his copy. At least, he gave me his copy with the expectation that I would read and return it; can you really call it a loan when the other person doesn't want to borrow it? Whatever you want to call it, though, the book was on my desk, and it's short enough (100 small pages) that I didn't have any real excuse not to read it; so I did. I was pleasantly surprised--quite surprised, in fact. It's not great literature by any means, nor is it likely to be mistaken over the long haul for one of
C. S. Lewis' works (though Gregory clearly admires Lewis--I caught a couple nods to Mere Christianity over the course of the book); for that matter, I wouldn't even put it with Peter Kreeft's work. Still, it's clearly and cleanly written, and far shorter than I feared on the preciousness one so often finds in Christian fiction. More importantly, the book goes far beyond the sophomoric popular theology I expected to find; Gregory manages consistently to be simple without being simplistic, which is an important and difficult line to walk, and his apologetic is wide-ranging and thoughtful--and deeper than most contemporary Christian nonfiction. On several points (such as the discussion of heaven), his book can even serve (and will, I hope) as a useful corrective to the poor theology served up in many places around the American church.

All in all, I was pleased and impressed: Dinner with a Perfect Stranger is indeed an "invitation worth considering," for non-Christians and immature Christians alike. It's not great fiction, but it's probably good enough writing and storytelling to please most non-academics these days, and it's not just milk (or chicken soup), either--there's a lot of good, solid food for the soul here. Recommended.

Note: fans of Dinner with a Perfect Stranger might be interested to know that there's a sequel, focused on Nick's wife Mattie, called A Day with a Perfect Stranger.

Knocking on Heaven's Door

For the last few weeks, I've been working my way through David Crump's book Knocking on Heaven's Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. Dr. Crump's a religion professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, and he's written a truly superb book; there's more meat in the introduction alone than you'll find in many books on prayer. I picked it up after reading Lauren Winner's review, thinking it could give me a useful frame for a sermon series, and that's been one of the better decisions I've made lately. I will indeed be leaning on this book in my preaching this summer, but it's done me a lot more good than just that; I can honestly say my prayer life is stronger and deeper as a result of the reading I've done so far, and I look forward to seeing what Dr. Crump draws out of the rest of the New Testament. Highly recommended.

Song of the Week

Another favorite of mine is fellow member of the Regent College community Carolyn Arends. There's a lot of good songwriters up there in Canada, and she's one of the best. She's way under the radar at the moment because she went indie and stopped touring a few years ago to give herself time and space to raise her kids, but she's still writing and singing and putting out albums (which are available through her website); her recent albums are more uneven than her studio work, but still well worth listening to, and better than a lot of the material out there. After all, to say that an album isn't as good as Feel Free or This Much I Understand isn't exactly an insult. Here, for instance, is my favorite lyric off Arends' second album, Feel Free (a cut which reminds me of the late, much-lamented Rich Mullins):

Do We Dare?

The prayers that we pray in foxholes and funerals,
The songs that we sing in delivery rooms,
The questions we ask when nobody's listening
But the man in the moon . . .
The way our hearts beat--faced with a sunrise,
Like maybe they know something we don't;
But it's all in code, and we can't decode it--
Or maybe we won't.

Do we dare pay attention, dare even mention
The mystery we find ourselves caught in?
And do we dare to remember
All that we have forgotten?

Each breath that we take, we take for granted,
So if there are clues, we remain unaware.
All the days of our lives burn down like matches--
Vanish into thin air.
But there are dreams that we dream when we least expect them,
And memories that come like unbidden tears,
All the things we believed when we were still children--
It's been so many years . . .

Chorus

Bridge:
We are battered and torn from the day we are born
In a world that has blinded and bound us;
Is it any surprise we don't open our eyes
To the truth that's disguised all around us

Like the secrets we keep we don't know we're keeping
From before there was time, before there were lies;
Can we find you again, this far from the garden?
Do we dare even try?

Chorus

Words and music: Carolyn Arends
© 1997 Running Arends Music/New Spring Publishing (a division of Brentwood Music Publishing, Inc.)
From the album Feel Free, by Carolyn Arends

Washington politics at their oddest

No, I don't mean D.C., I mean my home state; which tends, politically speaking, to be strange, but not as strange as Oregon to the south or British Columbia to the north. This gambit, though, is the sort of thing you might expect to see come out of Oregon:

New initiative: No children? Then no marriage
'Absurd' idea aims to start discussion

I may comment on this later; right now . . . I'm speechless.

Song of the Week

These days, I think my favorite active solo artist (with all due apologies to Sufjan Stevens, who was a couple years behind me at Hope College) is Andrew Peterson; I enjoy his music, and I appreciate the depth and thoughtfulness of his lyrics. His second album, Clear to Venus, is still his best, I think, with several songs that are as good as anything he's written; here's my favorite, which opens the album.

No More Faith
1 Corinthians 13:13

This is not another song about the mountains,
Except about how hard they are to move;
Have you ever stood before them
Like a mustard seed who's waiting for some proof?

I say faith is a burden—
It's a weight to bear;
It's brave and bittersweet.
And hope is hard to hold to;
Lord, I believe,
Only help my unbelief

Till there's no more faith,
No more hope;
I'll see Your face and Lord, I'll know
There's no more faith,
No more hope.
I'll sing Your praise and let them go,
'Cause only love,
Only love remains.

Have you ever heard that Jesus is the answer
And thought about the many doubts you hide?
Have you wondered how he loves you
If he really knows how dark you are inside?

I say faith is a burden—
It's a weight to bear;
It's brave and bittersweet.
And hope is hard to hold to;
Lord, I believe,
Only help my unbelief

Chorus

So I will drive these roads in thunder and in rain,
I will sing Your song at the top of my lungs,
And I will praise You, Lord, in glory and in pain
And I will follow You till this race is won.
And I will drive these roads till this motor won't run
And I will sing Your song from sea to shining sea,
And I will praise You, Lord, till Your kingdom come
And I will follow where you lead

Till there's no more faith,
No more hope;
I'll see Your face and Lord, I'll know
There's no more faith,
No more hope.
I'll sing Your praise and let them go,
'Cause only love,
Only Your love remains.
Hallelujah!

Words and music: Andrew Peterson
© 2001 New Spring Publishing (a division of Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing)
From the album Clear to Venus, by Andrew Peterson

Musings on the missional church

The latest issue, Winter 2007, of Leadership magazine showed up last week bearing a big close-up of a green cinder-block wall with a hole sledgehammered through it into the outside world--lots of open space with a city skyline in the distance; superimposed on the picture was the headline, "Going Missional: Break free of the box and touch your world." In one way, this was confirmation of a wry remark I ran across recently about all the trendy adjectives floating around the church these days, including "emerging/emergent" and "missional"; yes indeed, Leadership is on it, and "missional" is a hip thing to be. In another way, though, this was very encouraging, because it's an excellent issue with some truly valuable articles. Tim Conder's piece, "Missional Buzz," and the article by Wade Hodges and Greg Taylor, "We Can't Do Megachurch Anymore," are the only ones up on the Web so far, leaving several excellent pieces still only available in print; I'd encourage you to keep an eye out for them (or just go buy the magazine).

The reason this is so encouraging is precisely because "missional" is a hip thing to be, fashionable but ill-understood. The fact of the matter is, as Alan Roxburgh observed in the September/October 2004 issue of Theology Matters, while "almost everywhere one goes today the word missional or the phrase missional church is used to describe everything from evangelism to reorganization plans for denominations, to how we make coffee in church basements and denominational meeting rooms . . . [this language] is still not understood by the vast majority of people in either leadership or the pew. This is a stunning accomplishment: from obscurity to banality in eight short years and people still don’t know what it means."

Dr. Roxburgh should know, since he was one of the people, along with Darrell Guder, Craig Van Gelder, and George Hunsberger, who collectively wrote the book Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, which kicked off the whole discussion back in 1998. The book was the product of a network of missiologists and theologians called the Gospel and Our Culture Network, or GOCN, who sought to build on the seminal work of Bishop Lesslie Newbigin. Their aim was to address "issues of Gospel faithfulness in North American culture," and it was in this process that the term "missional church" was born, to define the way the church needs to operate if it is indeed to be faithful to the gospel message in the context of Western (not merely North American) culture.

The problem, as Dr. Roxburgh notes in his article, is that until recently, this work has largely "remained a relatively theoretic and abstract academic conversation about the church. Its books and ideas have been shaped more by internal conversations within the missiological academy than attentiveness to the needs of the churches." Missional Church, for instance, is easily among the small number of truly essential Christian books of the last decade--but it's also very dense, not easily absorbed or understood, and primarily theoretical in its orientation, short on practical application. It's to this problem that the September/October 2004 issue of Theology Matters is addressed, as it features Dr. Roxburgh's article--a concise explanation of what it means for the church to be missional--followed by two pieces arising out of the efforts of College Hill Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati to remake itself into a truly missional congregation. The unfortunate thing is that Theology Matters, while an excellent publication, is little known outside the PC(USA)--or within it, for that matter. That's why it's so encouraging to see Leadership step up to address the same problem, and particularly to see it do the job so well. As College Hill's associate pastor, the Rev. Stephen Eyre, put it, “The missional process is the shift from the church as an institution in a Christian culture, to a community in mission in a non-Christian culture”--and that's a shift the American church badly needs to make.

Note: Theology Matters is a publication of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry; its website is http://www.theologymatters.com. I mentioned, a few posts back, the Covenant Network and their newsletter; PFFM is another affinity group within the PC(USA), in this case working the orthodox side of the aisle, and Theology Matters is another of those publications which is sent to every pastor in the denomination (and probably only appreciated by those who agree with it). In this case, it's a publication which I consider one of the real benefits of ministering in the PC(USA). I would note that a free subscription is available to anyone who's interested; just go here to sign up.

Inaugural Song of the Week

I decided to take a page from others around the blogosphere and start doing a Song of the Week. I figure it will keep me active, and there are a lot of great songs out there. I'm kicking it off this week with a lyric off the great Charlie Peacock's next-most-recent album, Kingdom Come (his most recent, Love Press Ex-Curio, is instrumental jazz)--it's an uneven album, imho, but with a few great moments, of which this is perhaps the best.

Wouldn't It Be Strange?

I’ve got a question for your consideration;
I’ll make you privy to my contemplation.
Let me say in my defense, I know it goes against all common sense . . .
It’s not our nature, nothing we’ve been taught,
Flies in the face of every line we’ve bought.
It’s hard to see it, harder to explain;
I know it cuts against the grain:

Wouldn’t it be strange if riches made you poor,
If everything you earned left you wanting more;
Wouldn’t it be strange to question what it’s for?
Wouldn’t it be strange?

I know we’ve got some interests to protect,
A set of dots we’re committed to connect.
It makes us nervous in light of how it’s been
To play a little game of pretend:

Wouldn’t it be strange if power made you weak,
Victory came to those who turned the other cheek;
Wouldn’t it be strange to welcome your defeat?
Wouldn’t it be strange?

Wouldn’t it be strange to find out in the end
The first will be the last and all the losers win?
Wouldn’t it be strange if Jesus came again?
Wouldn’t it be strange?

Words and music: Charlie Peacock and Douglas Kaine McKelvey
©1999 Sparrow Song/Andi Beat Goes On Music/Songs Only Dogs Can Hear
From the album Kingdom Come, by Charlie Peacock

The parable of the three little pigs

The day of the Lord is like three little pigs who went out into the world to make their fortunes. Knowing the stories, they traveled until they found a place where no wolf had been seen for hundreds of years; then they settled down to build homes and earn their living.

The first pig just wanted to enjoy life, so he wasn’t interested in spending too much time building his house. “What’s the fastest way to get my house built?” he asked himself, and quickly settled on a straw house with no real foundation. In a short time, his house was finished; it was a little flimsy, but that didn’t bother him—he was rarely there, except to sleep.

The second pig sniffed with disapproval when he saw the first pig’s house of straw. “That’s simply not appropriate,” he said to himself. “Granted, there’s no need to go overboard—you shouldn’t take your house too seriously—but it’s important to have a nice, solid, respectable house, as befits a nice, solid, respectable member of society.” So the second pig built himself a house of wood, with which he was very pleased. “It’s no flimsy, disreputable shack like the first pig built, nor is it overbuilt like the third pig’s house; it’s just a good, practical house, enough and not too much.”

The third pig, meanwhile, wanted to build the best house he possibly could; he made sure he had the best possible foundation, then built his house of solid stone—top-quality granite, in fact—doing everything he could to ensure that his house would stand no matter what happened. He knew the other two pigs thought he was taking this whole house-building thing much too seriously, but he didn’t care; he wanted a house worthy of honor.

The three little pigs lived for some years in contentment, each pleased with the choices he had made, until one day a great wildfire swept unexpectedly through the area. The first little pig ran to his house of straw to save his valuables; but while he was in the house, the fire swept over it and it immediately burned to the ground, killing the little pig. The second little pig ran to his house of wood to save his valuables; but while he was in the house, the fire swept over it and it began to burn. The little pig dropped everything and ran; he escaped alive, but with everything he owned lost in the fire. He ran to the house of stone, where the third little pig let him in; while they were in the house, the fire swept over it—and passed on by. The house was scorched by the flames and smelled of fire and smoke, but was otherwise undamaged, because stone doesn’t burn.

For those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

(1 Corinthians 3:10-20, 6:19-20)

The butterfly effect and the providence of God

You've probably heard of the butterfly effect—the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Asia can cause a hurricane in the Caribbean—which is an illustration of one of the key elements in chaos theory, that of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. The idea is that a small change, such as a butterfly's wingbeat, can produce large results. This sort of sensitivity to initial conditions is one of the things which makes a chaotic system chaotic. (Chaos is not in fact disordered or random, merely highly complex and unpredictable.)

Now, I don't know much about chaos theory, not being the mathematical type—I leave that to my brother-in-law the chemical engineer. Theology is more my line; and in that line, what I do know is that God works his will through chaotic systems as well as through obvious order, using small events at one point to bring about significant results at another point.

I was reminded of this, in a small way, over the course of the last several days. Last week, as I was sitting in my office planning the Sunday service, I wanted to doublecheck the lyrics to Charlie Peacock's song "The Harvest Is the End of the World" (from which I had pulled the title for that week's sermon). I didn't feel like going home to grab the album (strangelanguage), so I figured I'd look it up on the Internet. I found it, in the archives of two blogs I'd never heard of before, one called Mysterium Tremendum (scroll down to November 12, 2003), and its parent blog (for lack of a better word), The Thinklings. You'll notice the latter blog heading the links list over on the left; it's a great blog, and was a completely unexpected and equally welcome discovery.

In the course of exploring The Thinklings, I noticed a post headed "Pachelbel Is Haunting Me," with the YouTube video of an incredibly funny rant on Pachelbel's Canon in D, courtesy of a comedian/musician named Rob Paravonian. (If you check the January 2007 archives, it was posted on January 5.) I finally got around to watching it today, laughed hysterically, and played it for my wife, who did the same. She also suggested sending the link to a friend of ours. Said friend called us maybe 20 minutes later, declaring that it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen, that she'd had a terrible day which was now "a zillion times better." She's been having a rough couple of weeks, of which today was worse than average, and needed a boost; clearly, this was God's provision for her to lift her spirits. And it all began last week when I didn't feel like walking back to the house to grab a tape.

OK, so maybe this doesn't seem like a big deal—but it was to my friend, and it was to me; and it's an illustration of how God weaves everything together to bring about the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes, even in the little things. To Him be the glory.

Umm, what was that about grace?

I just got the latest Covenant Network newsletter yesterday, which included the note that they will no longer be sending their publication to every pastor in the PC(USA), but only to those who pay for it. (For those not familiar with the Presbyterian Church (USA) and its internecine strife, the Covenant Network is one of the affinity groups working for the ordination of self-affirmed practicing homosexuals.) I can't say as I'll miss it all that much; maybe I should, for a number of reasons, but I won't. The smug "we're on the right side of history" tone annoys me no end, especially when married to the low-quality theology and exegesis I so often find in their work.

Now, some might read that and think I fault them primarily because of their advocacy of homosexuality, but that's really not the case. There are much deeper issues here, a point signaled by the slogan printed across the front of every CovNet publication: Toward a Church as Generous and Just as God's Grace. Anyone see a problem with that? For my part, I see two. The first is minor: while we want the church to look as much like God as possible, it is simply beyond human capacity for the church to be as generous as God's grace. Aim high, sure, but the fact that they so blithely take aim at an impossibility suggests to me that they don't realize it's impossible. That in turn suggests that their doctrine of God isn't high enough by a long shot.

The greater problem is that word "just." Who in the world ever said, or thought, that God's grace is just? The very idea is ludicrous. Justice is all about what we earn; God's grace is all about what he gives us that we have not earned and could never even begin to hope to earn. Confusing the two, as CovNet evidently does, is a major theological error, a fundamental misunderstanding of who God is and who we are (and pretty much everything in between). Attempts to set aside the Scriptural witness on homosexuality are symptoms; this kind of thinking is the true disease. Christianity isn't about our rights, or what we deserve; it's about the fact that all we deserve is Hell, and God gives us his kingdom anyway. Maranatha--come, Lord Jesus!

Barack Obama and the case for faith in the public square

I most often vote Republican for a number of reasons. One is that as a whole, the positions taken by the Republican Party line up better with my own beliefs. Another, however, is the frequency with which the Democrats nominate people I find it hard to respect. Thankfully, that isn't the case in our congressional district, the 2nd of Colorado; unfortunately, it's all too often the case at the presidential level. I don't expect the national Dems to nominate someone I could be happy voting for, but I wish they would at least nominate someone I could respect. They're out there, politicians like Virginia's Mark Warner or New Mexico's Bill Richardson—or, perhaps most intriguingly (though not for 2008), Illinois' Barack Obama, who showed why in his recent keynote address to the Building a Covenant for a New America conference.

As Slate's Amy Sullivan writes, "Obama's speech, delivered to an audience of the frustrated religious left, . . . was, for the first time in modern memory, an affirmative statement from a Democrat about 'how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy,' as Obama put it. . . . [H]e doesn't defend progressives' claim to religion; he asserts the responsibilities that fall to them as religious people. Americans are looking, Obama said, for a 'deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country.' He started that conversation. A few others are joining in. It's time for everyone else to catch up."

I appreciate this speech (and Obama for giving it) because I consider the increasing secularization of the Democratic Party—and its concomitant effects on the Republican Party—unfortunate for the health of our nation. The increasing identification of our political parties with a sacred vs. religious split marginalizes the Christian Left (and while I may not agree with them on many points, that's unfortunate for the democratic process), while turning the demands of folks like the Chicago Tribune's Eric Zorn for a thoroughly secularized public square into a fundamental plank of American liberalism. Which, in my point of view, it shouldn't be, because that privileges one religious outlook over all others. That's religious discrimination, which we all know is a Bad Thing.

Of course, Zorn and others would deny that. When he writes, "Speaking as a secularist—I don't like that word, really, but it'll do for now—and presuming to speak for them, what we ask of believers—all we ask—is that they not enter the public square using 'because God says so' as a reason to advance or attack any policy position," he doesn't believe he's "asking believers to abandon their values or beliefs as a prerequisite to engaging in political debate"; indeed, he writes that "the idea that this demand is hostile to religion is a common and popular strawman . . . it's also completely wrong. " Clearly, he understands his own secular presumptions as religiously neutral, rather than as a set of presumptions which compete with religious ones.

With this, I cannot agree; where Zorn writes, "Whatever beliefs or philosophies shape your values or guide your personal conduct are of no nevermind to us," I have to say that he's wrong. As any mathematician or philosopher could tell you, it's not just your conclusions which matter—your reasoning, which provides the foundation for those conclusions, matters just as much, and it really is significant if you get to the right place for the wrong reasons. It's significant because it means you're right as much by accident as anything, and that getting one point right is no indicator that you'll get anything else right. As such, the "beliefs or philosophies [that] shape your values or guide your personal conduct" do matter—they matter a great deal—and for people like Zorn to insist that people like me pretend otherwise is precisely to "ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square," as Sen. Obama put it.

So what's the alternative? Sen. Obama is completely correct when he says, "Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King—indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history—were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition." The problem, though, as any preacher knows, is application: what do we do with that? That's the tricky part, and I think the senator himself wobbles in saying, "Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values." I understand his concern here, "their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason" (and on a side note, shouldn't that be "our proposals"?), and I agree with that; but who gets to define what values are "universal"?

The fact of the matter is, requiring religious folk to make arguments only on grounds of "universal . . . values" will be translated right back into saying "that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates." As a recent Christianity Today editorial noted, "What Obama fails to see is how often specifically Christian or religious reasoning has been at the core of social movements," and how often his test would invalidate precisely those reformers whom he praises. There needs to be room for people of all stripes to make arguments for their positions on the basis of their own values, rather than restricting them to arguing on the basis of values pre-approved by others. It should no more be necessary for Christians, Muslims, and Jews to pretend to be secularists than for secularists to pretend to be Christians, Muslims, or Jews. We should all be free to make our arguments on the basis of who we really are and what we truly believe.

Of course, if we do so without trying to establish common ground with those who stand in different places—if, for instance, Christians make political arguments without trying to connect them to values held by at least some secularists—then we wind up only preaching to the choir, building very narrow movements, and that's not a good thing. From a pragmatic point of view, then, while I don't think it's wrong to "enter the public square using 'because God says so' as a reason to advance or attack any policy position," if that's our only reason, we ought not expect to get very far. Christianity Today addresses this point in its editorial, arguing that "what Lincoln, King, and others did . . . was use a variety of reasons—some religious, some pragmatic—to motivate social change. Thus, listeners with or without a religious bent could find some reason to buy into the cause."

To be sure, there are those on the conservative end of American Christianity who would object to such an approach; but their objection, I believe, rests on their failure to take seriously Augustine's insight that all truth is God's truth. When we as Christians approach political issues from that perspective—and when we understand that God is not capricious, that he has reasons for everything he tells us to do and not to do—then we come to understand that "pragmatic" arguments which appeal to values we share with those who don't share our faith aren't merely pragmatic, but are in fact theological. We are never called to say, "Thus says the Lord," without explaining why "thus says the Lord"—what the reasons are, as best we understand them, for the commands God has given us—and this is no less true in the political realm than anywhere else. It isn't our place to "defend the ways of God to man," as Milton put it, but it's certainly our responsibility to explain them as best we can. To do so is both good theology and good politics; to fail to do so is arrogance, and nothing makes for worse politics—or theology—than arrogance. May God be glorified in our lives.

Taking off the plastic

After a long time away from this--due to illness, technical problems, and a whole host of other circumstances--it feels like walking into a house that hasn't been lived in for a year and a half: the air has gone flat, there's dust everywhere, and all the furniture is covered with clear plastic. Time to take off the plastic, sweep and vacuum the floors, dust the mantle, and get back to work.

Electoral musings, theological edition

This is the last post on the recent election, barring something really bizarre; but I wanted to end on a theological note, because the church needs to respond to this election based not on political affiliations but on the truths and principles of our faith. This is the first step to recovering a theology of politics, which I believe is essential for us now as it has always been. To that end, I want to point you to a colleague of mine in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts; if you haven't discovered his blog, rectify that, and dig deep—it's good, strong food for the mind and soul. His posts on this subject, titled "Presidential Election Results: A Christian Response," are a very good place to begin this discussion.

Electoral musings, attitude edition

I'm winding down on the election, but I do have a couple more things I want to post. For one, here are a couple excellent columns on the majority Democratic attitude toward religion and conservative Christians; oddly enough, one is from the major area paper we don't get here, the Denver Post ("Note to the Democrats from a values voter"), and one is from the major area paper we didn't get where we used to live, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ("It's Democrats who can do better"). No significance to that, but it amuses me.

And while it doesn't really fit the theme, consider this a sidebar, and go read David von Drehle's latest column in the Washington Post, "Take the Issues to the People, Not to the Courts." If the Democratic Party follows his advice, it will be bad for the electoral prospects of the Republican Party, but very good for the nation.

Electoral musings, part V

Well, everybody's trying to figure out why the Democratic Party lost (umm, because there are more Republican voters? Nah, too simple); as Harold Meyerson put it in the Washington Post, "We are . . . post-morteming like nobody's business." Now FOXNews.com has gotten into the act with an article that really makes me wonder if they deserve their conservative reputation. Consider the following statements:

"Even though Democrats would've helped [Midwesterners] more, they still voted for Bush because they think he’s a good old boy." (This from a Bostonian who thinks that just because he went to college in Indiana, he understands the Midwest. Sorry, bub, wrong culture.)

"It's clear that on conservative moral values, people voted for those values over their own economic interests. I don’t understand it, and I think we need to go back and look at it." (Leo Girard, president of the United Steelworkers of America)

Again, Perry Mason: "Objection—assumes facts not in evidence." Does it ever occur to liberals that perhaps conservatives actually don't believe that liberal policies are best for the economy? Mr. Union President, if you want to understand it, you might begin by considering the possibility that those of us who voted for Bush largely understood ourselves as voting both for those values and for our economic interests, not as voting for one over the other.

"Midwesterners don't really relate to Democrats. Especially Kerry, he was much more intellectual than Bush, and that's not what someone in Middle America relates to." (That was Carol Kolb, editor-in-chief of The Onion; she went on to accuse the Democrats of "a little bit of condescension." Pot, meet kettle.)

"That’s how [the GOP] creates divisions. You call them names. The right has done a very effective job at framing the left—they suck at responding." (That quote comes courtesy of the president of spinArt Records, whatever that is. Apparently, not a history major, or he'd realize that the GOP didn't start that war.)

The common thread in all these is the implicit belief that the Democrats lost because voters weren't smart enough to realize the truth. From my perspective, the revival of the Democratic Party as a national party will begin once they toss that ego-salving belief out the window and face reality: we knew exactly what we were doing when we voted Republican. (Well, not all of us; but as many as knew what they were doing when they voted Democrat. As the Rocky Mountain News' Dave Kopel points out, "Political ignorance plays no favorites.")

Finally, there's this: "Ask [Republicans] what Jesus said about the difficulty of a rich man getting into heaven. What does this say about tax cuts, about cutting funding for schools, health insurance and apparent favoritism for the wealthiest contingent of our country?" The chap responsible for this quote is a schoolteacher in Austin, TX. I'm sorry to have to tell him, but he's unqualified to do biblical interpretation. The point of that parable is that Jesus' fellow Jews regarded the rich as the likeliest to get into heaven, for a combination of reasons, and thus that if the rich would have such a hard time, what hope did anyone else have? Hence Jesus' comment, "What is impossible for human beings is possible with God." In other words, salvation is utterly impossible by any human effort; it's only possible through God's action in Jesus Christ. That is the point of this parable—it's nothing at all about "tax cuts . . . cutting funding for schools, health insurance [or] apparent favoritism for the wealthiest contingent of our country." To be sure, the gospel does bear on these issues, but this passage doesn't; and just as importantly, the Bible shouldn't be applied so simplistically—by either side.

Electoral musings, moral values edition

Well, we seem to have moved on from the "moral values" phase of election post-mortem, courtesy of folks like David Brooks, E. J. Dionne Jr., Charles Krauthammer, and James Q. Wilson; I think they've overstated their case somewhat—moral issues had a great deal of traction this year, and where Bush drew a considerable chunk of his support based on such issues, Kerry botched them, as Terry Eastland and Richard Wolffe point out—but we're still talking about only 22% of the electorate who put such concerns at the top of their list (and that, of course, doesn't tell us by how much, or what was second, or how important moral values were for other voters). Dionne's point is well taken that this presidential election was too complicated to be explained that simply.

Still, it was entertaining to watch the reaction of many liberals to the importance of moral values to this election—Ellen Goodman's column is one example: they essentially said, "What we have to do is explain that our issues are moral-values issues too—that poverty is a moral-values issue, and opposing the war in Iraq is a moral-values issue, and raising taxes is a moral-values issue," and so on and so forth. Such an approach fits the Democratic Party's preferences for simple solutions (Want more revenue? Raise taxes. Want to address poverty? Give poor people money. Want to address international crises? Call the UN.); it's also remarkably condescending, assuming that folks voted Republican out of ignorance, and that all the Dems need to do is set us straight and we'll vote donkey. The truth is, as Mark Steyn and David Limbaugh point out, we know those are moral issues, and we think the Democrats are on the wrong side of those, too—and that the Democrats won't succeed in winning back voters they've turned off until they set aside that condescension.

BTW, for a fairer Democratic perspective on this, check out Gary Hart's column in the New York Times.

Electoral musings, Canadian edition

If you haven't spent time living in Canada, you've probably never read David Warren, columnist for the Ottawa Citizen and the Southam newspaper chain. That's a loss, because Warren is one of the most astute, perceptive observers of politics and culture I've ever run across. For an introduction, check out his post-election column, "Four More Years."

Electoral musings, NYC edition

Long week—two funerals and sick kids—so I'm behind on where I wanted to be; but the New York Times' response to this election, in the form of columnists Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman, was so egregious, I had to come back to it.

Kristof had the gall to title his column "Living Poor, Voting Rich," and to talk about "the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting—utterly against their own interests—for Republican candidates." Excuse me? How Marxist, and how condescending! Even if one grants his economic analysis that Bush has been and will be bad economically for those he mentions (which I most emphatically do not), who is Kristof to define people's "own interests" for them? Who said we viewed our own interests in purely economic terms? Perhaps his view of the world begins and ends with his checkbook, but mine certainly doesn't, and I'm not alone in that. For a great many of us, our "own interests" have a great deal to do with what sort of country we want to live in; to accept a country which is far less than what we believe it should be in exchange for a few more dollars in the pocket is a deal many of us wouldn't want to make.

On this one, Kristof would do well to read the rest of the NYC media; Newsday columnist Joseph Dolman pegged him pretty good when he wrote, "National Democrats . . . keep thinking their losses stem from Republican demagoguery or from a misunderstanding of their message by voters in the hinterlands or—let's be totally honest—from an epidemic of stupidity among the people whose minds they want to win.

"In short, they haven't a clue."

Dolman's right, which is why, as he put it, the Democrats are "whistling Dixie after another defeat."

On the flip side, Friedman was perceptive enough to realize this, though I think he was overstating things to declare us "two nations under God." When he writes, "this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don't just favor different policies than I do—they favor a whole different kind of America. We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is," he's absolutely correct. My problem with his column is where he goes next:

"Is it a country that does not intrude into people's sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make? Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body? Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate? Is it a country where religion doesn't trump science? And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us—instead of dividing us from one another and from the world?"

Let's take this piece by piece, shall we?

"Is it a country that does not intrude into people's sexual preferences . . ."

Umm, two problems with this statement. One, this country always has intruded into such preferences, both at the level of who can marry whom (polygamy, for instance, is out) and at deeper levels (isn't pedophilia a "sexual preference"?). Two, since I know Friedman isn't really talking about "sexual preferences" generically (unless he surprises me by coming out with defenses of pedophilia and incest), last I checked, the federal government does nothing whatsoever against homosexual sex.

". . . and the marriage unions they want to make?"

Again, our government has always defined marriage, and to define is by definition to set limits. There is nothing new about this, nor is insisting on the current operating definition of marriage anything the slightest bit new; what's new is that some people want to change that definition. This isn't about giving people of homosexual preference the same rights as everyone else, because they already have the same rights as everyone else: the right to marry anyone who is legally available to be married to them. What they want is to expand that definition, to change the rights which are available to anyone, and if the argument works for homosexuality, it logically works for pedophilia and incest as well. Friedman's cast of the argument is simply a canard.

"Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body?"

No doubt; but this begs the question of whether or not her unborn child is in fact part of her body. I used to watch Perry Mason when I was a kid, and Perry was always objecting that Hamilton Burger's questions "assumed facts not in evidence." Friedman's guilty of the same thing here.

"Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate?"

History lesson, Mr. Friedman: Not "Founding Fathers," but "Founding Father," as in, one of them: Thomas Jefferson—and he wasn't around when the Constitution and Bill of Rights were being drafted. The "line between church and state" is in fact a constitutionally dubious interpretation of the religion clause of the First Amendment, one which has been used to deny the actual sense of that clause: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion [in other words, it isn't allowed to do anything about the establishment of religion one way or the other], or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." There's been a heck of a lot of "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" done in the name of "separation of church and state," which ain't even a constitutional principle.

"Is it a country where religion doesn't trump science?"

That's not really the issue. The issue is competing religions—one particular branch (or collection of branches) of Christianity versus the religion of scientism, which is aggressively atheistic. For most on the Christian side of these battles, all we're fighting for is a level playing field.

"And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us—instead of dividing us from one another and from the world?"

When those who oppose this president and everything he stands for have done everything in their power to mobilize the country against him, why is it that our divisions are suddenly all his fault? In my experience, it generally takes two to be divided.

Given these questions, it's probably no wonder that Friedman goes on to declare, "None of the real problems facing the nation were really discussed." Personally, I'd disagree. Fortunately, we do agree on this:

"Meanwhile, there is a lot of talk that Mr. Bush has a mandate . . . . Yes, he does have a mandate, but he also has a date—a date with history." Yes, indeed; and following Friedman's motto, "Never put yourself in a position where your party wins only if your country fails," I know we'll both be rooting for President Bush to meet that date honorably and well.

Electoral musings, part I

Interesting election, huh? I've been amused by the debate over whether or not the President and the Republican Party have a "mandate"—lots of crossing commentary on that point, with some saying it's no mandate because the country is deeply divided, while on the other hand some have even gone so far as to deny that the country is divided because Bush won a record number of votes (never mind that that's a matter of population growth and turnout, and that his 3% margin of victory wasn't exactly overwhelming). I'm amused because none of that really matters: he and the party won a majority, which is pretty much the bottom line.

Anyway, courtesy of sites like RealClearPolitics, I think I've read most of the major stuff that's been published on this election the last couple of days. There's been a lot of great analysis; as usual, the basic primer has already been written by the indispensable Howard Fineman of Newsweek ("A Sweet Victory . . . and a Tough Loss"). Fineman is right to make the point that Kerry in many ways ran a poor campaign, a point also made well by the LA Times' Matea Gold (though with no help from a grammatically-challenged headline writer: "Kerry Failed Boldly to Portray Himself") . There's also been, in general, a pretty thoughtful and respectful spirit, marked by the understanding that the worst that could happen isn't Our Guy Losing, but another case of election-by-litigation reminiscent of 2000 (see Anne Appelbaum's column in the Washington Post, "Accept the Verdict"—registration required, but it's free).

Unfortunately, there have been exceptions, and they haven't all been limited to blogosphere eruptions like Altercation. To be sure, from the more liberal parts of the blogosphere, one can only expect statements that "The problem is just this: Slightly more than half of the citizens of this country simply do not care about what those of us in the 'reality-based community' [i.e., liberals] say or believe about anything"—a statement breathtaking for its arrogance and contempt. What is concerning is that this same attitude has shown up in the more respectable print media.

The editor of The New Republic, Peter Beinart, for instance, felt justified in opening his latest column, "What Went Wrong?" with this paragraph: "The other side may be euphoric, but the intensity of their happiness can't match the intensity of our despair. Honest conservatives, even those who admire President Bush, know he didn't earn a second term. They know he staked his presidency on a catastrophe, and that, by all rights, Iraq should be his political epitaph. Their victory, while sweet, can't be fully enjoyed because it isn't fully deserved." Excuse me? The presumptuousness in those sentences is nothing short of breathtaking. It reminds me of arguing with my younger brother when we were kids—he would say, "I know I'm right, you know I'm right, you just won't admit it." Apparently, Beinart believes that just because he thinks Iraq is "a catastrophe," therefore everybody else must think so too. As it happens, there are other views of the situation.

Later on in his piece, Beinart declares, "Cultural sensitivity is one thing; principle is another. . . . The fact that [gay marriage] is widely unpopular cannot obscure the fact that it is morally momentous and morally right." Uh-huh. A flat assertion, "I'm right and you're in the wrong." Why do I have the feeling that he would consider an equal but opposite assertion ("The fact that gay marriage is widely popular among the elites cannot obscure the fact that it is morally momentous and morally wrong") to be the worst form of bigotry? What, in his view, makes his beliefs right and his opponents' bigoted except who holds them? I'm a firm believer in moral absolutes, but it does seem to me that for those of us not wearing the prophetic mantle, the language of absolutes needs to be spoken with just a little more humility—we need to speak and write out of the awareness that our perceptions are always, at best, fuzzy around the edges, and that our understanding is never equal to the truths we perceive. As such, even if he were correct (which I don't believe he is), that statement would be hubristic.

Of course, anyone who feels justified in describing "Tom DeLay's America" as "craven toward the economically powerful and vicious toward the economically weak, contemptuous of open debate and thuggish toward an increasingly embittered world" clearly has never encountered the concept that one should always give one's opponents credit for good motives until proven otherwise; he truly does seem to believe that conservatives, deep down, must logically share his view of the world, and thus that conservative opposition to his favored policies must stem from base motives. Not fair, not just, and not right. Wasn't stereotyping supposed to be a bad word?

Note: in his column of 11/12, Beinart wrote this: "In my last column ("What Went Wrong," November 15), I wrote, 'Honest conservatives, even those who admire Bush, know he didn't earn a second term.' That was a poor way of expressing my point: that, judging from the president's low approval rating and the large percentage of people who felt the country was on the 'wrong track,' Bush had not convinced most Americans he deserved a second term. They gave him one because of their reservations about Kerry. My argument was a political, not a moral, one. I have no doubt that many honest conservatives believe Bush is a good, even great, president, and that, in their eyes, he has earned a second term." I still disagree, but the restatement does take the arrogance of the column down a notch.

Under the bright (Liberal) red maple leaf

I've been intending to post something regarding the PC(USA)'s recent shameful entanglement with Hizb'allah, and some of the defenses which have been offered, but I'm still mulling that. In the meantime, those who don't follow politics north of the 49th parallel might be interested in Fr. Raymond J. DeSouza's commentary on the recent Canadian federal election. During our time in BC, I used to tell people that Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was the world's only elected dictator, since parliamentary rules essentially turned the Canadian House of Commons into his personal fiefdom. It appears things have changed, which is a profoundly good thing. Here's hoping, despite Fr. DeSouza's concerns, that this opens the way for a recovery of strength by Canada's somewhat beleaguered social conservatives.

Oh, and a side note: in the article, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie is quoted as calling the Charter of Rights and Freedoms "the glue that holds the country together." Silly man; every true Canadian knows that Tim Hortons is the glue that holds Canada together . . .

The mystery of redemption

Of the "other important matters" referenced up above there, the most important by far is baseball; and while I have to admit there are bigger stories in America this morning, even someone so unfortunate as to not like baseball has to stop and ponder this a moment: The Boston Red Sox just won the World Series.

But it's not just that they did it after 86 years of falling short, it's how. Eleven days ago, Boston was down 0-3 and 8 innings, with the greatest closer in the game, Mariano Rivera, coming on to close out a New York sweep; the Yankees were already preparing for their 412th World Series appearance, or some such ridiculous number. And what happens? Somehow, the Red Sox punched through, launching an eight-game October winning streak that might be the most incredible thing I've ever seen happen in baseball (which is saying something). They became the first team in baseball history to come back from an 0-3 deficit to win a playoff series—finishing the sweep in Yankee Stadium! (and leaving millions of Yankee fans wandering around like Esau, wondering where their birthright just went)—then went on to sweep the team with the best record in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals, on the biggest stage of all, gaining some measure of payback for their WS losses to the Cards in 1946 and 1967. The mind boggles. (Fortunately for one's sense of sanity, despite the fact that they now have the NFL's dominant team and baseball's reigning champion, Boston fans are still Boston fans.)

I don't just mention this as a baseball fan—that day will come if my beloved Mariners ever manage to climb this mountain (which could easily take 86 years in its own right); I'm also struck by the theology of this moment. If one believes in the sovereignty of God as I do, that Jesus Christ is Lord of everything, then that includes baseball. Which makes sense, because God is the giver of all good gifts and baseball is definitely on that list (yes, even in years when the M's go 63-99—this postseason made up for a lot of those losses). And if that includes baseball, then the Red Sox' accomplishment has a lot of things to teach us about the improbable providence of God, and about redemption, because God isn't only concerned with our "souls," he's concerned about all of life. And maybe, just maybe, in the case of the Yankees, this has some things to teach us about humility as well.

Right for the wrong reasons

The Rev. O. Benjamin Sparks, interim editor of The Presbyterian Outlook--a weekly journal covering the PC (USA)--put out an editorial a week ago titled "Praying for the Powerful," which makes an important point in a remarkably wrongheaded way. I agree with his opening sentence ("The first duty of responsible citizenship is prayer – even before we wind our way into the voting booth"), and his conclusion that "the first duty of Christian citizenship is prayer: prayer for all persons; prayer for kings and rulers to keep peace; prayer that the church catholic be kept humble before God, who made all humankind, and who desires that all humankind be saved." Unfortunately, most of what comes between them is highly problematic, to say the least.

The first problem I have with the Rev. Sparks' editorial is its smug, condescending, self-righteous leftism. I was struck, for instance, by his complaint that "factions within the church catholic are trying to capture U. S. government for religious purposes: restoring prayer in the schools, posting the Ten Commandments in public places; outlawing all abortion, and permitting or restricting gay and lesbian civil unions or 'marriage.'" I have three problems with this statement. First, "factions" is a loaded word--by connotation, it marginalizes those groups and labels them divisive. Second, "capture" is a biasing word: it implies that the U. S. government rightly belongs to those who hold other positions (no prayer in schools, no Ten Commandments, unrestricted abortion license, same-sex "marriage") and that anyone who challenges those positions is trying to steal our government from those who properly own/control it. Third, this sentence paints those with whom the Rev. Sparks disagrees with the broadest possible brush, assuming unanimity of opinion which in fact isn't present. In short, it appears that in his understanding, when liberal Christians argue for liberal political positions, that's fine, but when conservative Christians argue for conservative political positions, this is somehow sinister and inappropriate; only liberals, then, have the right to claim that their politics are supported by their faith. Such a conclusion is not only biased, it's ridiculous.

My second objection to the Rev. Sparks' argument is his apparent belief that our government exists to protect the rights of religious minorities but not those of this country's Christian majority. This would have come as a great surprise to James Madison, who was just as alive to the dangers of the tyranny of the minority as he was to those of the tyranny of the majority. (See Federalist #10.)

Third, there is the Rev. Sparks' seeming position that the Western church should have connived at the efforts of communist governments to keep their slaves from reading the Bible, rather than trying to smuggle Bibles behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. In making this point, he interprets Paul's argument in Romans 13 to mean that a) no "subversion of the authority of [any] government" is permissible, that b) trying to smuggle Bibles into countries which were attempting to suppress Christian faith is such subversion, and thus that c) Paul would argue that the church should support that effort rather than trying to share the gospel message with people in those countries. Given that this conclusion is in direct opposition to Paul's own actions (see Acts 13-28), it is, to say the least, questionable. For Paul, subjection to the governing authorities had definite limits, and certainly didn't include acceding to their demands to stop preaching the gospel. (See also Acts 3-5 for the consensus of the early church on this point.)

Fourth, I cannot see how the Rev. Sparks reached his evident conclusion that if the Soviet government were still in place, we would never have seen the rise of radical Islam and all would be right with the world; this position is frankly ludicrous. Given that the rise of bin Laden and radical Islam was one of the major factors in the failure of the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan, on the one hand, and the fact that the Putin government is no less authoritarian or ruthless than the Soviets--in this area, it can fairly be said that there is no significant difference between the two--on the other, how can this argument possibly stand?

Fifth, I have serious objections to the Rev. Sparks' rather Erastian understanding of the proper relationship between the church and the state. In defining "the real business of the church" as "prayer, listening to the memories of the apostles in the light of scripture (still for them only the Hebrew Scriptures), and baptism, holding all things in common, almsgiving, and the breaking of the bread," he is speaking of the earliest Christians, but if that was "the real business of the church" then, how can it be significantly otherwise now? While he does admit that Christians should call our politicians to be moral and just (well, at least liberal Christians should), his argument makes government dominant over religion and the proper arbiter of religious disputes. Why he puts greater trust in government to act in accordance with the gospel than he does in the church is an interesting question; more importantly, for all that he talks about "the deeply Calvinistic, Reformed understanding of government written into our nation’s founding documents," this ain't it (being neither Reformed nor present in the aforementioned documents).

Sixth, it seems to me that at various points in his argument, the Rev. Sparks is a little casual with the facts, that he simply hasn't taken the time to do the necessary research; my second and fourth objections, above, would be examples of this. Perhaps the most egregious example, however, comes in this statement: "Most religions, including Christianity (though not Sikhs) harbor intolerant, angry factions hell bent on oppressing and killing on behalf of their god/gods." Excuse me? Though not Sikhs? I can only conclude that the Rev. Sparks lives in the wrong Richmond.

You see, I've never been to Richmond, VA, but I spent three years in Richmond, BC, part of five years in and around Vancouver, BC, Canada. As it happens, the metro Vancouver area has quite a large Sikh population, from which came the first Sikh premier in Canadian history, Ujjal Dosanjh (a good man whose time in that office was brief, thanks to the malfeasance of his immediate predecessor). As any Vancouver-area resident who bothered to follow the news could tell you, violence broke out in the area's Sikh temples on more than a few occasions as extremists and moderates fought for control. Further, one of the reasons why this was such a concern to the BC government was the strong linkage between those extremists and Babbar Khalsa, the Sikh terrorist group responsible for the bombing of Air India Flight 182 and a bombing that same day at Tokyo's Narita Airport (which was supposed to have been another mid-air bombing, but the bomb went off prematurely). Babbar Khalsa is the largest and worst expression of the militant strain in Sikhism which is also responsible, inter alia, for the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

I don't offer this to bash Sikhs in any way, shape, or form, or to blame the Sikh faith for the embrace of terrorism by some of its adherents; my point isn't to single Sikhism out, but rather to point out that the Rev. Sparks did so wrongly, in ignorance. Sikhism as much as any religion may be said to "harbor intolerant, angry factions hell bent on oppressing and killing on behalf of their god/gods," and he should have done the research to find that out before off-handedly declaring otherwise.

In general, I don't think this editorial did The Outlook credit, which is too bad; not only does the publication deserve better, but I think the Rev. Sparks' thesis is important for Christians to keep in mind. Unfortunately, while he's right in his main point, he's right for all the wrong reasons.

Still here

Rather a long hiatus, that--crazy summer + technical problems = dead blog. Oh, well . . . life here in the mountains is settling back into winter calm (which might seem odd, but outside the ski towns it really is pretty quiet up here once Labor Day passes), and we have time to think again.

One of my aims this winter is to read Solzhenitsyn's The Red Wheel--I started the first book, August 1914, years ago but was sidetracked before getting very far. It may seem like an odd ambition, but I was spurred to it by Daniel Mahoney's recent piece in First Things, "Traducing Solzhenitsyn," which is a brief consideration of the various ways in which Solzhenitsyn has been misrepresented and slandered in the West. It's no surprise, really; he's a true prophetic voice, and the established order doesn't like prophets much. It never has. (Though if you listen to debates in the mainline churches, you'll hear a fair number of people claiming the prophetic mantle for themselves--usually followed by yet another spiel as to why God supports the Democratic Party agenda. Funny, that.)

What NARAL doesn't want you to know

It's been quite a month, but life's settled down again, mostly. I haven't seen The Passion of the Christ yet, nor am I looking forward to it, but I imagine when I do it will spark a few thoughts. What caught me today was this article on the lack of regulation of American abortion clinics; I'm not sure which horrifies me more, the stories of how bad some of those clinics have gotten, or the fact that the abortion industry has been fighting regulation tooth and nail. Shouldn't "women's reproductive health" be more than a slogan? I have relatives who are nurses and doctors, and I've spent plenty of time in hospitals, both as a patient and as staff, and while I respect and appreciate most of my colleagues in healthcare (well, former colleagues, now), I have no illusions as to the necessity of regulation--and neither do they.

"If you think you understand . . ."

I often disagree with Fr. Andrew Greeley—make that usually disagree—on matters of theology, but I respect and enjoy his work all the same; while I think he argues from many incorrect first principles, he's a man of considerable perception and insight. His latest piece in the Chicago Sun-Times, "There's No Solving Mystery of Christ," is a well-written recovery of one of St. Augustine's greatest insights. As Fr. Greeley puts it in his closing line, "If Jesus makes you feel comfortable with your agenda, then he's not Jesus." Amen. Now there's something that both liberals like Fr. Greeley and conservatives like me really need to bear in mind.

(Note:  the original article is no longer online; the link has been repointed to a reposting of the original article.)

Cannibalism between consenting adults

You might not have heard this, but the lawyer for Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal, is defending his client's actions on the grounds of mutual consent--Meiwes wanted to eat somebody, Bernd Brandes wanted to be eaten, and who is the state to interfere with the actions of two consenting adults? Unfortunately, as the inimitable Theodore Dalrymple points out, he has a case. Can modern philosophy and jurisprudence really come up with any coherent reason to convict him?

Sex, please, we're British?

Sunday's London Telegraph printed an eye-opening article on sex education in the US and the UK. The US has gone in the direction of abstinence education where the UK has emphasized safe sex and pregnancy prevention. The result? Teen pregnancy rates in the US are the lowest they've been in a decade, while the UK is "the pregnancy capital of Europe."

Gee, maybe there's something to be said for traditional morality after all . . .

A tree grows in Brooklyn

Who ever came up with the term "common sense," anyway? There are few things less common, unfortunately—especially in politics. During Advent and the Christmas season, you can really see that in the tortured compromises we come up with to let people celebrate. To me, the answer has always seemed obvious: stop trying to censor celebrations, stop trying to censor faith or keep it out of the public square, and just let everybody in. Fortunately for me, Peggy Noonan agrees with me, and she's made a better case for it than I can.

While on the subject of holidays: I ran across an interesting opinion piece from the New York Times on Kwanzaa, written by a woman named Debra J. Dickerson. The piece is titled " A Case of the Kwanzaa Blues," and it raises some significant concerns about the holiday, concerns I suspect most people (especially those who haven't studied much history) haven't considered. Whatever you might think of Ms. Dickerson's position, I think her comments deserve careful consideration.

"There's too much to do—I'm bored."

Think that sounds silly? Think again. As Charles Colson notes in one of his BreakPoint commentaries, psychiatrist and theologian Richard Winter has made a compelling case for just that thesis in his book Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment. Here's Colson quoting and summarizing Winter:

When stimulation comes at us from every side,' he writes, 'we reach a point where we cannot respond with much depth to anything. Bombarded with so much that is exciting and demands our attention, we tend to become unable to discriminate and choose from among the many options. The result is that we shut down our attention to everything.' That is, we get bored.

Over-stimulated and bored, we start looking for anything that will give our jaded spirits a lift. Winter says that boredom explains the rise in extreme sports, risk taking, and sexual addiction. 'The enticements to more exciting things have to get louder to catch our dulled attention,' he writes.

I think Winter is dead on, but there's more to be said (which he might well say in his book, for all I know). Speaking theologically, the root sin here is the sin of sloth. Now, we tend to think of sloth as laziness, but there's more to it; the ancients defined sloth as "the sin of not caring enough about anything." C. S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, produced a vivid picture of a person fallen into sloth: "a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off," because there is nothing that such a person cares about enough to pull them out of such a rut and give zest to life.

Sloth, at its peak, is what we know as despair; and if Winter's analysis is correct—and I believe it is—it's because sloth has become a major besetting sin of people in our culture. We simply don't care enough to do the work of engaging the world around us, but we still crave stimulation, and thus we demand stimulation without work; and thus the cycle begins. As to what has created this situation . . . well, I think Eastern Orthodox theologian David Hart has done an excellent job of explaining that in his essay "Christ and Nothing." If you're up for some serious philosophical reflection, check it out.

Captors, or rescuers?

If you aren't familiar with DEBKAfile, you might want to fix that. It's a site run by an ex-Mossad agent who still has, and uses, his old contacts. The site is decidedly pro-Israel, as you'd expect, but as long as you bear the bias in mind, it's a great source for information and analysis. Case in point: an article on the site which argues that Saddam wasn't in hiding, he was a prisoner, perhaps held by another clan which was in blood feud with him and his clan. That would certainly explain his odd submissiveness.

"That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."

Well, maybe not according to CBS execs back in 1965, when "A Charlie Brown Christmas" first aired; seems they thought it was way too religious—and they didn't like the jazz, either. Apparently, even though they went ahead and ran it, they planned to bury it afterward. But then people loved it, and it won an Emmy, and so it was back the next year, and the year after that, and the year after that . . .

I can just imagine Lucy's reaction to those network suits who tried to kill "the longest-running cartoon special known to man" 38 years ago: "You blockheads!"

"All Americans"? Uh-huh, riiight . . .

I don't subscribe to Time, so I was late in reading Charles Krauthammer's Nov. 17 column, in which he flatly declared, "The goodwill America earned on 9/11 was illusory. Get over it." I regret the delay; imho, Krauthammer hits the nail on the head most of the time, and this column is one of his best. He does a valuable service in exploding the myth that Le Monde's famous "We Are All Americans" editorial actually signaled a real shift in French attitudes (or anyone else's) toward our country. Read their editorial and his column, and see what you think.

Iowa meets Iraq

Denver's pretty fortunate in its newspapers; I wouldn't call either the Rocky Mountain News or the Denver Post world-class, but they're better than a great many major newspapers in this country. (Detroit? Uggh.) That still puts them well below the papers we enjoyed in Canada, but the Great White North seems to be unusually blessed in that department. The key thing is that the Denver papers, unlike many, have a number of writers worth reading; and one of them, News columnist Bill Johnson, is currently on assignment in Iraq, and sending back good material. I recently discovered his Dec. 11 piece, covering his initial impressions of Baghdad; it's an interesting column all the way around, but particularly so for his report of an event that didn't get any other play in the US media, so far as I know: an anti-terrorism rally in the city's Furdoise Square. From his description, it doesn't sound like all that much, but hey, it's a start.

Echoes of Ozymandias

The capture of Saddam Hussein is the biggest news this world has seen in a while, but the way in which he was captured was almost more interesting--he could have suicided, as he'd always said he would do, he could have fought back (his position was ultimately hopeless, but he could have killed as many soldiers as he had bullets if he had wanted to), but instead he meekly submitted. Judging by the initial reactions of the Arab media, I think his submission might mean more in the end than the fact that he was captured.

When the previous President Bush fought Saddam, the fact that Saddam remained in power was a tremendous boost to the Iraqi tyrant's image, because it allowed him to present himself as a survivor who could never truly be defeated. So much for that.

No guru, no method, no teacher

I've been on a Van Morrison kick lately, courtesy of a friend of mine who loaned me some of his albums which I don't have. I appreciate Morrison's music, but even more the depth and vision of his lyrics; recently I came across an article by Carl E. Olson titled "The Incarnational Art of Van Morrison" which captures that beautifully. As Olson puts it, Morrison's work at its best "is rooted in reality (uncommon in much pop and rock music) and seeks to incarnate spiritual truth and meaning in concrete forms, themes, images, and narratives."