Each year during Lent, I try to focus some of my musical attention on an artist and/or album from the popular culture of my lifetime in which I find lessons for the Lenten journey. In past years we’ve considered the music of Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding, and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
In 2017, I will pay attention to the long, strange wilderness journey of Neil Young. Few artists have had as long and varied career as the Canadian singer-songwriter, who sang in folk clubs in the 1960’s with Stephen Stills and Joni Mitchell, got the public’s attention with the band Buffalo Springfield, and began the 1970’s by joining Crosby, Stills, and Nash, adding darker tones and textures to the music of that remarkable group. That year also saw him release his breakthrough solo album, After the Gold Rush, which was one of the most formative albums in my life.
After that, Young’s career went on to follow a long, winding road with many detours, side trips, breakdowns, and refreshing oases, and it’s still going today. This complex journey makes it difficult for me to choose any single album as representative of what Neil Young has meant to me as an artist, poet, songwriter, and performer. Should I focus on After the Gold Rush, with its melancholy and sometimes mournful tones, Young’s plaintive, vulnerable vocals, its jagged, driving, angry social statements like “Southern Man,” and its simple, intimate tributes to romance? One review calls this album Young’s “requiem for the 60’s,” saying this:
But more than any of this, After the Gold Rush puts an end to ’60s idealism through a mix of songs that cut specifically — the meditative title track, a piano-driven ballad that ranks among Young’s very best — and more abstractly (the album’s opening cut, “Tell Me Why”) into the deep, overriding sorrow that runs throughout the record. “Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s,” he sings on “After the Gold Rush,” pretty much sealing a fate nine months into the new decade.
Well, that’s Lent all right — the end of idealism beside a flowing stream of sorrow. Mother Nature on the run.
But Neil Young soon went on to even darker and deeper explorations into mortality. After his most successful commercial record, Harvest, his friend, former Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten died of a drug overdose. And Young went from singing songs like the popular “Heart of Gold” to edgy, chaotic rock songs, such as those captured on the 1973 live album Time Fades Away. This, along with two other albums, Tonight’s the Night, and On The Beach, formed what came to be known as Neil Young’s “doom trilogy.”
Sounds right up the ol’ Lenten alley, huh?
Well, at this point we’re only in the mid-1970’s, folks, and since then Neil Young has found more ways to reinvent himself and comment on life’s mixed bag than I have time to tell in one blog post.
So many of his albums, then and in subsequent years, would be appropriate to consider during this season of mud and muck leading to rebirth. Therefore, instead of choosing one album on which to focus, I will take time during Lent to explore the Neil Young catalogue, finding songs that speak to me of this journey, the incredible mix of romance and loss, fragility and strength, quiet whispers and overwhelming roars, and life and death that makes up Lent.
All these contrasts and more can be found in the music of Neil Young, my Lenten muse in 2017.
• • •
For my selection today, here is a performance of “Philadelphia,” which Young wrote for the Jonathan Demme movie Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks as a lawyer dying of AIDS. It was nominated in 1994 for an Oscar for Best Original Song. It also received a nomination for the Best Male Vocal Rock Performance Grammy in 1995. It is one of Neil Young’s most poignant songs, written for a story about death and ultimate triumph of life and love.
Note from CM: As I prepare for the days of Lent, I found this meditation from 2015 helpful.
• • •
Lent is not about getting better.
Lent is about preparing to die.
The word “lent” means “spring.”
But Lent is not the spring. Lent leads to spring, as death leads to new life.
Lent is the muddy, mucky fecund field awaiting the deposition of the seeds.
Lent’s destination is a cross and Holy Saturday.
Darkness, a forsaken hill, a sealed tomb.
The death of God, hope’s demise.
From strength to weakness, from weakness to humiliation, from humiliation to death, from death to burial.
The lenten season is traditionally the time when catechumens are prepared for baptism.
Forty days of getting ready to drown.
Lent is the death bed vigil.
As we say in hospice, it involves coming to terms with our terminality.
I have sat with patients and their families during those vigils, some of them interminably long.
It is the hardest thing to answer when someone says, why must they linger so?
Why indeed, for forty days, must we watch ourselves dying ’til we’re dead?
I have seen and participated in approaches to Lent that differ from this.
Dubbed “adventures,” “training,” “journeys,” “discipline” or “formation,” the focus was on getting better, stronger, more mature, more capable. Casting off death so as to become more alive. Stripping off the sin that so easily besets us and running a good race to the finish.
I don’t know.
Forty years in the wilderness didn’t make Israel stronger. It was just long enough for the old generation to drop so that God could make way for a new one.
And I’ve changed how I visualize Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness too. Somehow I used to have this idea of Jesus standing strong at the end of forty days, triumphantly rebuking the devil so that he had to flee the Savior’s power. Frankly, that’s probably hogwash. After forty days of fasting, it was more likely a gaunt, weakened and sickly Savior who could barely whisper his replies. Mark tells us that the wild beasts were circling and that “the angels ministered to him.”Now I picture a haggard, dusty body laying face down in the sand, the hyenas and buzzards eagerly watching for that final breath. It took supernatural beings to come and lift his chin and drip water through his parched and chapped lips along with a tiny bite of food. Jesus in extremis, guarded from jackals, nursed back to health one sip, one crumb at a time.
That’s what forty days of dying looks like.
I don’t want to die. I doubt you do either.
Which is why Lent is hard for us after all.
We can talk all we want about what’s coming on the other side, but it’s the death bed we’re all trying to avoid.
We want the fruit without the mud and the muck.
Death we can live with. It’s the dying part that’s hard.
But that is Lent.
It’s not about getting better.
It’s about dying until we’re dead.
SERMON: Just Let the View Take Your Breath Away (Transfiguration)
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’
• Matthew 17:1-9
• • •
In 2014, Gail and I went to New England for a vacation, something we hope to do again this summer. One great pleasure of that trip was spending time on the coast of Maine. We saw various sights there, but there was a day trip I felt we had to make, and that was out to Monhegan Island, off the coast from Boothbay Harbor.
Monhegan is a small, rocky island about ten miles out from shore, where Native Americans once found good fishing. Basque and Portuguese fishermen also visited it centuries ago, and there’s a plaque, adjacent to the island’s one room schoolhouse, which commemorates a more recent visit by Captain John Smith in 1614. Monhegan is only about one square mile in area, is accessible only by boat, and there are no cars or paved roads on the island. Only about 65 people live there year-round.
For about the past 100 years, Monhegan has been a summer haven for artists and other visitors who appreciate its isolation and beauty. Great care is taken to assure that its wilderness areas remain wild. Monhegan has about 12 miles of trails, often steep and strenuous, that lead through wooded areas and over rocky ledges up to the highest ocean cliffs on the Maine coastline. I wish I had an IMAX screen here in the sanctuary this morning so that you could see what an amazingly beautiful and special place it is.
We took a boat out to the island for a few hours of hiking and taking pictures on a glorious summer day back in 2014. We began by making our way up a steep wilderness trail that led to the top of the hump-shaped island and over to its western shores. When we reached the top and stepped off the wooded trail onto the rocks at the top, we were completely unprepared for the sight we saw.
The Atlantic Ocean stretched out before us, dark blue-green under the blue skies. Far below, waves crashed in on the rocks while gulls flew over the swirling waters and nested on the cliffs. Looking to the north and south, we saw incredible cliffs standing guard over the pounding ocean waters. We were stunned. The vistas took our breath away. We were utterly speechless. It was as though we had come through a tunnel into another world, another universe, wild and blue and overwhelming. We must have stayed up on those rocks for an hour, just trying to take it all in.
I’ll never forget that experience. I’m sure some of you have had the same feelings of wonder and exhilaration as you stood at the rim of Grand Canyon, or glimpsed the grandeur of Rockies for the first time, or have been in a place where you can see what the sky really looks like at night without the interference of manmade lighting. Maybe you’ve stood and looked out over Yosemite or driven along a scenic highway in California, or perhaps you’ve traveled to other lands and seen other remarkable natural wonders.
I don’t know how to describe what we as human beings feel at those moments, except to say that magnificent sites like these look almost unreal to us. They are so beyond our day-to-day experience that we can barely process what we see. They make us feel small and overwhelmed with awe, but at the same time they expand our spirits to such a degree that we feel exalted and lifted up, as though we are filled with something lighter than air and can rise up into a new realm of consciousness to be a part of it all.
Today is the day we remember an event called the Transfiguration, when Jesus took his disciples up the mountain and was transfigured in glory before them. What happened on the mountain that day was something like our experience on Monhegan Island but even more than that. Peter, James, and John were exposed to something even more wonder-inducing than even the most awesome natural wonder on earth. It was as though God pulled back the curtain and gave them a chance to look fully into the heavenly dimension. It was so glorious that they fell to the ground, hid their faces, and didn’t know what to think or say.
Now, the text says Moses and Elijah appeared there on that mount with Jesus. This is not accidental. Both Moses and Elijah had their own transfiguration-like experiences with God.
When Moses was on the mountain and the Israelites were fooling around with the golden calf, Moses pleaded that God would show him his glory. And we are told that God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock and his glory passed by Moses that day. Moses was so affected by that experience that scripture says the skin of his face shone because he had been in the immediate presence of God.
Many years later, Elijah returned to that same mountain, to that same cave, and the Lord gave a great display of glory to Elijah before speaking to him about what he was to do next. Phenomena like earthquakes, mighty winds, and fire from heaven overwhelmed the prophet.
Throughout the Bible, various people encounter God when he pulls the curtain back and reveals that there is more to life than meets the eye. There are spiritual vistas and scenic views that we can’t even imagine. The Bible and the saints of all ages testify that there is an entirely different dimension of reality, which we sometimes call “heaven.” It is God’s realm, the spiritual realm, a realm that is inconceivable to us.
What are we supposed to learn from this Gospel story?
Well, I don’t know that the disciples were supposed to learn any particular “lesson” that day, nor do I think that there is really any “lesson” for us in this story. It was simply an overwhelming, unforgettable reminder to them and to us that God is great, God is glorious, God is greater than any of us can imagine. That there are things in life that will always be beyond us. That there are things about God and other dimensions of reality before which we must simply bow in awe and speechless wonder. Sometimes I just think God wants us to take in the view.
And maybe that’s lesson enough. We go through so much of life imagining that we are in control and that we have most things figured out. But on the Mount of Transfiguration that day, Peter and the others learned, as Hamlet said, that “there are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in [our] philosophy.”
There ought to be a tangible humility about any person who has faith in God through Jesus Christ. Anyone who has had the least glimpse of God and the glory of heavenly things is forever scarred by the experience. He or she becomes hesitant to speak in dogmatic, opinionated terms about God and what God is like. Words can never capture glory.
This experience, as well as many other things Jesus revealed to them, confounded the disciples and demolished their proud, self-confident ideas about life.
But if they thought this mountaintop experience threw them for a loop, they had no idea what was coming. It wouldn’t be long before they would see Jesus on top of another hill, and once again, they would find themselves completely undone.
Here, at the Transfiguration, they saw Jesus in glory, but on the next mountain, the mountain of crucifixion, he would be put to shame. Here his face and clothes were transformed into shining brightness, but on the next mountain his face would be bruised and bloodied and his clothes stripped from him. On the mount of Transfiguration, they saw Jesus with Moses and Elijah, but on the mount of crucifixion, he would appear with two thieves. This mount was overshadowed by a bright cloud; that next mount would be covered in darkness. On this mount, they saw Jesus more fully alive than they could imagine. On the next mount, they would watch as he suffered and died on a cross. (see Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone-2, p. 14)
Talk about taking your breath away! Talk about seeing something that is so awesome it seems unreal, something so outside the realm of our experience that our minds can’t take in! And to think that this was the way that Jesus most fully revealed God and his love to us — it’s inconceivable!
There is more to life, more to God, more to Jesus than any of us can imagine. And sometimes God doesn’t ask us to do anything, other than to come out of our little worlds, get a glimpse of glory, and let the view take our breath away. Amen.
Quinquagesima is the name for the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. The name originates from Latin quinquagesimus (fiftieth), referring to the 50 days before Easter Day. Bach wrote four cantatas for this Sunday, BWV 22, BWV 23, BWV 127, and BWV 159.
Today’s choice from BWV 22, “Jesus took the twelve to himself,” is fitting for those who are preparing for the beginning of Lent. This season marks Jesus’ journey to the cross, and this alto solo speaks of following Jesus up to Jerusalem to join him in his suffering.
This deeply personal expression of devotion is enhanced and given emotional force by the lovely oboe obligato melody which accompanies it.
Mein Jesu, ziehe mich nach dir, Ich bin bereit, ich will von hier Und nach Jerusalem zu deinen Leiden gehn. Wohl mir, wenn ich die Wichtigkeit Von dieser Leid- und Sterbenszeit Zu meinem Troste kann durchgehends wohl verstehe!
My Jesus, draw me after you,
I am ready, I want to go from here
and up to Jerusalem to your suffering.
Happy am I, if the importance
of this time of suffering and death
I can thoroughly understand for my consolation.
”It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.”
BRUNCH UPDATE: Just in time for Lent, President Donald Trump has delivered his own Sermon on the Mount. You gotta read this.
Speaking of pancakes, Tuesday is Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Pancake Day), time to fill up on all the fattening stuff you can before the Lenten fast begins on Wednesday.
Here is a breakdown of ten celebrations around the world and what they’ll be eating and drinking on this annual day of indulgence. Hey, toss me a Moon Pie while I wait for my Shark & Bake sandwich to finish cooking, will ya? Pretty sure I’m gonna find space for a paczki in the morning too.
Well, it’s time for flapjacks, tomfoolery, and more reflections on what’s happening in this crazy world. Welcome to Brunch!
Here’s a politician in Sweden who gets it…
A Swedish politician is pushing to give employees an hour-long paid break to go home and have sex.
Per Erik Muskos, a member of the Swedish Social Democrat party, made the proposal during a council meeting in the northern city of Overtornea.
Mr Muskos said he’s backing the measure because he believes midweek sex breaks will improve wellness and boost childbirth in the northern region he represents.
“Childbirth should be encouraged,” he told the Stockholm-based newspaper Aftonbladet.
“When sex is also an excellent form of exercise with documented positive effects on wellbeing, the municipality should kill two birds with one stone and encourage employees to use their fitness hour to go home and have sex with their partner.”
But then, on the other hand, some negative news on the same subject. Fox reports that one presumably healthy habit might be putting a crimp in the ol’ romance…
A study from the University of North Carolina published this month in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise found that men who exercise intensely may have a lower libido than men who exercise moderately or lightly.
Researchers polled more than 1,000 active men on both their workouts and sex lives. Participants were split into groups by duration of exercise, intensity of exercise and libido levels. When the groups were compared, researchers found that those who reported light or moderate workouts were more likely to report moderate or high libidos than those who reported intense workouts.
Authors caution that the study was self-reported — which means the data relies on participants to be truthful and self-aware — and doesn’t show that exercise causes a low libido, but rather that the two are correlated.
I hear the caution, but still, why not play it safe? There is good reason I don’t exercise.
If you’re going to work out, this is how I suggest doing it. You know this guy gets all the lovin’ he wants…
The Oscars are on Sunday, so there’s still time to stream the nominated movies, read reviews (links below), and fill in a winning ballot at the New York Times. Any favorites out there?
Speaking of movies, a new salvo was launched in the creation wars this week by Del Tackett of the so-called “Truth Project” (a Focus on the Family ministry that promotes “Christian worldview” teaching). A one-night movie event was held to show “Is Genesis History?” at theaters across the country.
Here is the trailer for the film, and it moves me to throw out a challenge today to our iMonk community —
How many holes can you find in the arguments of this film just by watching the trailer?
Come one, come all, and let’s have a field day with this one over brunch. Folks, these people are serious. There is an entire segment of the church which wants us to believe that the Bible is a book of science, that no discovery can contradict its scientific teaching, and that we cannot trust what humans have discovered over centuries from the Book of Nature. Their position insults both the Bible and the serious practices of the scientific community, and it makes the church into a legitimate laughingstock in the world.
As for me, I’ll stick with St. Augustine on this one: “It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things [i.e. things in nature], claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.” (The Literal Meaning of Genesis)
I invite you to poke as many holes as you can find in this trailer today. In Christian love, of course.
Another icon of evangelicalism’s spiritual-commercial-industrial complex is closing its doors.
Two years ago, as Daniel reported on Saturday Ramblings, Family Christian Stores filed bankruptcy. Now, the 85 year old business has announced that it is closing.
According to Religious News Service: “The Grand Rapids, Mich.-based company employed more than 3,000 people in 240 retail sites across 36 states. It was considered the world’s largest retailer of Christian-themed merchandise.”
We have a couple of FCS stores in our area, and I think the only time I’ve been in any of them in the last ten years was to buy some disposable communion cups and a few baptismal certificates.
I remember when these kinds of stores began to proliferate (the ones I knew were mostly independent). It was back in the day when “Jesus Music” filled the air and we, as young “Jesus People,” were enthralled to go to a place where you could put your hands on Christian books and discover Christian popular music. Those were the days when I thought Keith Green was a profound theologian, and when Phil Keaggy’s monster guitar solos were a guilty pleasure. I was seeking out books by authors like Watchman Nee, trying to figure out if the charismatic movement was truly of God or not, and being intrigued (and not a little confused) by end times teachings. Back before “the Christian Right” or even the “Moral Majority” stole the attention of Christians, before “church growth” and before the culture of evangelicalism became a “thing” in the U.S. We were just a bunch of kids in jeans, playing guitars, and hungry to study the Bible.
Some might say evangelicalism “grew up.” I tend to think it just got swallowed up by another culture.
Oh, and you want more good news? Stop the presses. The Album of the Year has arrived, and I’ve been swooning over it all week.
Alison Krauss released her highly anticipated record, Windy City, last Friday, and I am completely smitten. A departure from previous Krauss bluegrass-style offerings with her band Union Station, Windy City is an old-fashioned record with modern sensibilities, a lush country album of covers with impeccable arrangements that perfectly complement her angelic voice. The ballads are achingly beautiful, the uptempo songs clever and fun, the whole atmosphere resplendent with warmth and feeling.
Did I say I love this album?
Here’s the track list (some versions of the album include extras):
Sometimes someone else’s sins become the light of seeing our own.
Several years ago I was working with a particularly difficult young church staff member. His pattern was to do everything his way, and when negative consequences arrived, to be completely defensive. Insight into his own character wasn’t much of an interest. Finding others guilty was. His personal drama usually involved anger and outrage, always featuring his own innocence as the main character.
Keeping this young man placated became a full-time job. As his own ministry deteriorated, his skills at blaming others never lost steam. He was a master at claiming to be persecuted when, in fact, he simply was not doing his job.
On one occasion, one of his older family members (not from our church) passed away. During the visitation at the funeral home, this young man called me in his usual tone of practiced outrage, this time because only a few members of our church had come out to visit at the funeral home. He was right. Probably less than ten people had visited this relative, who wasn’t part of our church or community.
Why am I telling this story? Because of something I noticed in the middle of that young man’s outrage.
I had worked with him on staff for a couple of years, and I’d never seen him at the funeral or visitation of anyone. He was outraged about something he did all the time.
When I realized this, I thought about the hypocrisy of his outrage, but I soon found myself wondering about my own “outrages.” How many of them were conducted in the shadow of my own obvious sins?
James says that the anger of man does not create the righteousness God requires. (1:20) I think there’s another aspect to what the anger of man does (or doesn’t do): it masks and hides other obvious sins, and despite all the “insight” that we claim when we are angry, we’re often the blindest at that moment we’re most angry and most certain we’re not wrong.
Perhaps this is why the angry man is the fool in Proverbs and elsewhere. My young staff member was outraged and thought he saw an outrageous truth. What he didn’t see was the truth of his own life. He was the fool blinded to his own sin by his raging anger.
In playing the part of the “righteous” judge- which is required of the angry person- you must claim the mantle of correct insight. But a knowledge of sin comes in the quietness of humility; in those moments when God shows us what we usually do not see.
Is this why Ephesians 4:26 counsels us to not let the sun go down on our anger? Before the end of the day, we need to restore a truthful, humble view of ourselves and lose the self-righteous assumption that our anger guarantees that we are right.
When Jesus was angry at the moneychanger in the temple, he was insightful about the truth of the situation and the truth about himself. Put yourself in the same situation: would you have the combination of truthful humility and righteous anger that Jesus has at that moment?
What you are looking at in that answer is your own fallenness. It’s the difference between yourself and Jesus, and why you should be careful of thinking that your imitation of him insures that you are right.
What sins lie obvious to God and others, but invisible to me in the shadow of anger or other emotions?
In past months, I’ve learned that believing I am right has little do with the sins that may have taken root in the soil of my “rightness.” I’ve learned that I’m quite good at excusing sinful anger, cruel words, gossip and worse sins with my conviction that I am right about something that matters.
As I’ve seen this pattern in many, many others, I’ve learned to expect it in myself. Sometimes I feel that a creeping sense of conviction of my own rightness is a sure sign that I am sinking down into the deceptions of arrogance. I realize that all those times I, like so many preachers, have given an indulgence to my flock for their anger towards persens, groups and events, I have likely simply led them to sin with impunity.
These days, Christians are often a very angry group. (And so too, btw, are their critics.) We’re certain we’re right on a whole catalog of issues, and I believe we usually are right on many of those issues. I’m also certain that in the shadows of our anger about cultural and political issues, there are many of our own sins, putting down roots and growing more powerful.
Jesus, I am not like you. It’s the enemy that leads me to believe my own “righteous anger” flies clear of petty sins and hypocrisies. Open my eyes to the duplicity and delusions attached to my sinful nature. Break those chains and give me true humility. Work in me so that conviction is not the enemy of humility. Show me the seductions of believing I am right and righteous in any way apart from you. Amen.
Most people do not understand how evolution purports to work. They think it involves substantial changes in multiple organisms in the same generation for a change to pass down over time. Such changes are wildly improbable and so they conclude evolution is wildly improbable. If evolution worked that way, they’d be right. But evolution involves the shifting of average characteristics of populations over long periods of time. Individuals DO NOT evolve, populations do. As Douglas J. Futuyma (in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986) said:
“Biological evolution … is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny (developmental history) of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles (different forms or groups of genes) within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest proto-organism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions.”
The answer to a previous blog comment, “So how did we go from zero (humans) to thousands” is that we didn’t. There was always a population of thousands. As the average characteristics of the ancestral population to humans and chimpanzees changed, the group of thousands that eventually became human became more human-like generation after generation. The change from one generation to the next would not be immediately recognizable as it would be a subtle shift in the AVERAGE characteristics of the population as a whole. It is a continuum over millions of years, and most people cannot imagine the time frame. There was NO one point where daddy and mommy were apes and the little baby was a human.
Dennis puts this in perspective by using the analogy of the evolution of the English language. Consider the familiar verse in modern English from John 14:6—
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Now consider that verse in Anglo-Saxon from around the year 990 AD:
Even knowing what we are supposed to be reading, we can barely make out the sense of the words. Besides the spelling and grammar, there are letters that are no longer in use. It’s a stretch to say they are the same language, and yet, Anglo-Saxon incrementally became modern English over generations. If we were to view snapshots of this transition over time, that is to say, sample the “fossil record” of language, we would see the following “transitional forms” from the Middle Ages to the present:
Jhesus seith to hym, Y am weie, treuthe, and ye lijf; no man cometh to the fadir, but bi me. (Wycliffe Bible, 1395)
Iesus sayd vnto him: I am ye waye ye truthe, and ye life. And no man cometh vnto the father but by me. (Tyndale Bible, 1525)
Iesus saith vnto him, I am the Way, the Trueth, and the Life; no man cometh vnto the Father but by mee. (King James Version, 1611)
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (King James Version, Cambridge edition, 1769)
This is a brilliant, and fruitful analogy. As Dennis says:
“As we know, these various translations are not instantaneous changes from one to the next. Rather, they are samples drawn at intervals from a continuous process. All along the way they remained the “same language” in the sense that each generation could easily understand their parents and their offspring. Over time, however, changes accumulated that gradually shifted the language. Word spellings, grammar, and pronunciations changed. Given enough time, it becomes more and more of a stretch to say the languages are the same—such as Anglo-Saxon and Modern English. Despite the striking differences we see now, the process that produced them was gradual. Additionally, there is no convenient point where we can say Anglo-Saxon “became” Modern English; the process was a continuum.”
The analogy of the way the average characteristics of a species can shift over time is apt. The total genetic instruction for building an organism is the genome. Our genome resides on 46 chromosomes, 23 from our father, and 23 from our mother. Females have two X chromosomes and males have an X and a Y chromosome. Each chromosome is a long string of DNA “letters”. There are four letters in the DNA alphabet. These letters are organic chemicals called: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymidine (T) linked together in a long string. The human genome has about 3 billion of these letters in each set of 23 chromosomes or around 6 billion “letters” altogether. In the analogy Dennis is making, we can consider the human genome to be a ‘language” shared by a population of “speakers”.
The DNA language changes over time in slight variations like treuthe > truthe > trueth to finally truth. Like in English, any change in one word is not that significant, the combined shifts of many words over generations is enough to radically change a language. Likewise, for a population of organisms; a shift from one allele of a gene to another will not have a large effect. The combined action of many such changes will significantly shift the characteristics of a population over many generations. Over time the genetic changes accumulate to the point where generations far removed from each other would not be considered the same species. Anglo-Saxon and Modern English then are like Indohyus and a blue whale.
Dennis then notes that another analogical way of thinking about the genome is that it is like a book. A genome has specific genes in a specific order, just as a book has specific words, paragraphs, and chapters arranged in a sequence. And now, dear blog readers, we are about to thrash about in the tall weeds of Genetics 101. It is very tempting to just quote the chapter at length. Though the book analogy is helpful, we should examine some differences between books and DNA sequences to better appreciate how geneticists compare two genomes to each other. This is where it gets a bit technical.
Each DNA letter has a partner that it pair up with.
Each chromosome has two long strings of letters
These two strings twist around each other to form the “double helix” structure that Watson and Crick solved in 1952.
The two strings separate during replication.
Each is used as a template to make a new complimentary string.
Imagine a long stack of children’s building blocks on its side.
Imagine four shades of blocks corresponding to the four DNA letters—A, C, G, and T.
Each shade of brick has magnets attached in a specific pattern on the side.
C matches to G and T matches to A.
Though DNA copying is highly accurate, it is not perfect, and copying errors arise.
Copying errors arise through mismatched letter pairs i.e. a “mutation”.
The next time the chromosome is copied, the mismatched pair will correctly specify its proper partner.
The mismatched pair (the mutation event) becomes locked in for one of the chromosome copies.
The result is a new variant in the population.
Recent studies indicate that out of 3 billion letter pairs, about 100 mutate every generation.
Like treuthe > truthe > trueth > truth, these subtle changes enter the population and may become more common over time.
The properties of DNA make it a great way to store and replicate information, but not much else.
Proteins are useful molecules made up of 20 (instead of 4) building blocks called amino acids.
Because of their structural diversity, proteins are great at most biological functions but don’t transmit information well. So both DNA and proteins are needed.
Since there are 20 amino acids and only 4 DNA letters, sets of 3 DNA letters are “read” to specify amino acids. There are 64 possible combination of DNA-three-sets called codons.
Most amino acids can be specified by more than one codon. For example, the amino acid, glycine, can be coded for by four different codons: GGA, GGC, GGG, and GGT. All four codons are equivalent in that they specify the same amino acid. Other amino acids can be coded for by up to 6 different codons. In other words, the amino acid codon code is partially redundant.
Dennis then gives a real example of a gene; the DNA sequence that codes for the insulin protein. Insulin being the protein hormone that regulates blood sugar in animals. So in Figure 2-5 the first 90 nucleotides and 30 amino acids for humans and dogs are compared.
Note we observe many correspondences and a few differences. Some DNA differences result in amino acid differences and some don’t. As Dennis says:
Now, in both species these “words” have the same “meaning”—both the human and canine genes produce a functional insulin hormone that regulates blood glucose levels. The fact that slightly different sequences can have the same function should not be a surprise; in many ways it is like the words treuthe, truthe, and truth, all of which carry the same meaning, despite their subtle differences…
In looking at the sequences above, we can see that there is good evidence to support the hypothesis that these two present-day genes come from a common ancestral population in the distant past… they are far more similar to each other than they are functionally required to be.
We can test this hypothesis further by looking at a larger data set. Humans are not thought to have shared a common ancestral population with dogs for a long time. When Linnaeus (1707-1778) drew up his taxonomy of animal life (prior to Darwin BTW) he famously placed humans and great apes in a category he called “primate” because of the close anatomical similarities. Consider these images:
OOPS, sorry, I meant these images:
While Linnaeus certainly was not thinking common ancestry, he naturally recognized that these species have a closer anatomical affinity to humans than other animals. So evolutionary theory predicts that these ape species share a more recent common ancestral population with humans than non-primate species such as dogs, do. If that is so, then their gene sequences should be a closer match to human sequences than what we observe in dogs. So let’s look at the example of insulin gene and include chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. What do we see?
What we observe for this short segment is that the gorilla sequence is identical to that of humans, except for one letter; the chimpanzee is identical except for three; and the orangutan is identical except for five, while the dog is different by 14. This level of identity far exceeds what is needed for functional insulin. We have failed to reject the hypothesis that humans share a common ancestral population with apes.
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, Rembrandt
AS MIST BEFORE THE SUN: THE SLOW RELIEF OF UNBELIEF By Klasie Kraalogies
Part 2
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half as bad as a lot of ignorance
• Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
⎈
The great difficulty in telling a long and meandering story is knowing what to leave out. But what I can’t leave out in my story is the impact of learning – partly getting a university education, but also making a greed for knowledge and understanding a major driving force in my life.
I went off to university, and completed a B.Sc. (Hons) with Geology and Mathematics as majors. Geology quickly showed my that even with a lot of standing on one leg, squinting with one eye while singing the Paternoster, there is no way I could make the evidence of the world around me fit into the narrow, Young Earth Creationist view I had been taught. But what I did was to shelve matters, trying to see if maybe I can hit upon a previously unconsidered idea with which to make things work.
Then, two things happened. At the head office of the sect, I picked up a copy of a magazine emanating from a fringe Calvinist group. Also, I attended a lecture by a Bulgarian maths professor that introduced Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems. The former opened my mind (if “opened” is the operative word?) to other types of theological thinking. The latter provided a way, at least temporarily, whereby I constructed what I thought was a clever way to reconcile my difficulties. I thought I was being clever – what I was doing was succumbing to sophistry, a postmodernist escape. Which is really funny in retrospect, because along with the rest of the Young, Restless and Reformed Crowd, I loved making fun of postmodernists.
I left the sect. Married by now, I had my children baptised in a Dutch Reformed Congregation, while also attending some other Calvinist churches. I learnt to get irritated by loud Young Earth Creationists, Baptists, and most Evangelicals. I started to appreciate Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Also during this time, I discovered Internet Monk. This was in the early 2000’s. Under various pseudonyms I developed a presence online, including Michael Spencer’s old Boar’s Head Tavern and that other site, which some here might remember, Reformed Catholicism (I think that was the name). I was appointed to the board of a small Christian Classical School. Yes, all of that. My unrecognized postmodernism allowed me to work in geology, and still confess a lot of other things that just didn’t quite fit.
But, one can only deceive one’s self for so long. Shortly after immigrating to Canada (2007), I realised that I really couldn’t reject the scientific evidence anymore. This was at the time of the discovery of the Denisovan subspecies of the human evolutionary branch. I mention that, because as with many events, there is a particular final straw that makes that happen (I checked the dates – the article that caught my attention came out in 2010). I admitted that to be consistent, I must admit to being a Theistic Evolutionist. You see, I quickly recognised the fact that acceptance or non-acceptance of evidence has epistemological consequences. If, like some Christians I know, I refuse to believe evidence, saying it is a lack of human understanding, or more common still, how can we know what is the truth, it also implies, explicitly, that we cannot absorb any other true information through our senses. Therefore, unless we are all gnostics, we must deny all knowledge. Epistemology is dead. Hence, either we follow the evidence, or we through all knowledge out, including the very Scripture we read. If you can’t trust your eyes, how can you trust words on a page?
This produced some peace for a period. Arriving in Canada, and looking at my local ecclesiastical options, we joined the LCC (Lutheran Church Canada, sister-church of the LCMS). Even there it wasn’t long before I was invited to join church council. Enthusiastic people soon get noticed. Of course, like the LCMS, the LCC is essentially a YEC-church. But I was prepared to live with that. At least we had a very liturgical congregation. That was fun…..
Next time: Crisis – Reason, Sociology and Information
I heard it again today, while attending the death of an elderly woman.
“This is not her. What we see here is just the shell. The real her is now in heaven with Jesus and with grandpa.”
And again a little later.
“It’s amazing to me how little seeing her shell bothers me. That’s not her. Everything that was truly her is now in heaven.”
Like it or not, this is what is understood at ground level as the Christian hope. One day we’ll cast off the shell of our body and go to our true home, where we’ll be free to be who we really are.
Problem: “everything that is truly who we are” includes our bodies. Right? We are embodied, vivified creatures. Dust and breath together, as Genesis 2 metaphorically affirms. In fact, I would argue it is impossible for us to imagine what human life is, what a human being is, without having some sort of physical, materialistic picture in our heads.
That’s why people say such mixed up things in the presence of death. On the one hand they express gladness that their loved one is free from “the shell,” out of their mortal body, that their “spirit” is in heaven. On the other hand, without any conscious regard for the inconsistency, they talk about how grandma is now “up there” dancing with grandpa or playing cards with Uncle Jack or holding the little baby she lost as a young woman. They simply can’t conceive of their loved in any other terms than what is familiar to them — this earthly, embodied life.
Let’s consider again what I consider to be a much more coherent and satisfying understanding of the full Christian hope. This is by N.T. Wright, from Rethinking the Tradition:
We should remember especially that the use of the word ‘heaven’ to denote the ultimate goal of the redeemed, though hugely emphasized by medieval piety, mystery plays, and the like, and still almost universal at a popular level, is severely misleading and does not begin to do justice to the Christian hope. I am repeatedly frustrated by how hard it is to get this point through the thick wall of traditional thought and language that most Christians put up. ‘Going to heaven when you die’ is not held out in the New Testament as the main goal. The main goal is to be bodily raised into the transformed, glorious likeness of Jesus Christ. If we want to speak of ‘going to heaven when we die’, we should be clear that this represents the first, and far less important, stage of a two-stage process. That is why it is also appropriate to use the ancient word ‘paradise’ to describe the same thing….
…In the New Testament every single Christian is referred to as a ‘saint’, including the muddled and sinful ones to whom Paul writes his letters. The background to early Christian thought about the church includes the Dead Sea Scrolls; and there we find the members of theQumran sect referred to as ‘the holy ones’. They are designated thus, not simply because they are living a holy life in the present, though it is hoped that they will do that as well, but because by joining the sect — in the Christian’s case, by getting baptized and confessing Jesus as the risen Lord — they have left the realm of darkness and entered the kingdom of light (Colossians 1.12-14).
This means that the New Testament language about the bodily death of Christians, and what happens to them thereafter, makes no distinction whatever in this respect between those who have attained significant holiness or Christlikeness in the present and those who haven’t. ‘My desire’, says Paul in Philippians 1.22, ‘is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.’ He doesn’t for a moment imply that this ‘being with Christ’ is something which he will experience but which the Philippians, like Newman’s Gerontius, will find terrifying and want to postpone. His state (being with Christ) will indeed be exalted, but it will be no different, no more exalted, than that of every single Christian after death. He will not be, in that sense, a ‘saint’, differentiated from mere ‘souls’ who wait in another place or state.
…Nor does Paul imply that this ‘departing and being with Christ’ is the same thing as the eventual resurrection of the body, which he describes vividly later in the same letter (3.20-21). No: all the Christian dead have ‘departed’ and are ‘with Christ’. The only other idea Paul offers to explain where the Christian dead are now and what they are doing is that of ‘sleeping in Christ’. He uses this idea frequently (1 Corinthians 7.39; 11.30; 15.6, 18,20,51; 1 Thessalonians 4.13-15), and some have thought that by it he must mean an unconscious state, from which one would be brought back to consciousness at the resurrection — so much so, perhaps, that it will seem as though we have passed straight from the one to the other. The probability is, though, that this is a strong metaphor, a way of reminding us about the ‘waking up’ which will be the resurrection. Had the post-mortem state been unconscious, would Paul have thought of it as ‘far better’ than what he had in the present?
This picture is further confirmed by the language of Revelation. There we find the souls of the martyrs waiting, under the altar, for the final redemption to take place. They are at rest; they are conscious; they are able to ask how long it will be before justice is done (6.9-11); but they are not yet enjoying the final bliss which is to come in the New Jerusalem. This is in line with the classic Eastern Orthodox doctrine, which, though it speaks of the saints, and invokes them in all sorts of ways, does not see them as having finally experienced the completeness of redemption. Until all God’s people are safely home, none of them is yet fulfilled. That is why the Orthodox pray for the saints as well as with them, that they — with us when we join them — may come to the fulfilment of God’s complete purposes.
Finally, lest you think I would rudely insist upon doctrinal precision when I’m visiting with grieving families and try to convince them, in the midst of fresh loss, that they should change their thinking about the future hope, let me assure you that I usually just stay silent and focus on being present and providing appropriate comfort. The last thing they need is a lesson in eschatology.
I may cringe when I hear them call the body of their deceased loved one a mere “shell,” but I don’t say anything. I just gather them at the bedside and lead them in prayer:
God of life, at this important moment we thank you that ______ is safe in your care. You tell us that to depart this life and be with Christ is far better, and so we pray that you would take _______ into your care and give her that joy and peace in your presence. May she rest in your love until the day of resurrection, when this mortal body will be raised and she will be remade, complete and new, in a whole new creation, where we will be reunited and there will be no more sickness, separation, and sorrow. Thank you that, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord and that nothing can ever separate us from your love. Hold ______ and her family in your love until that day. In your holy name we pray, Amen.
An imagined , but entirely possible, conversation:
Concerned Christian: Chaplain Mike, if you were a pastor, would you allow gays to attend your church?
CM: Sure. If they wanted to come to church, why shouldn’t I?
Concerned Christian: Well, doesn’t the Bible forbid homosexuality?
CM: Let’s say it does. Wouldn’t church be a good place for sinners to come? In fact, I can’t really think of a better place.
Concerned Christian: But aren’t you concerned to keep your church pure?
CM: I don’t think I’ve ever been in a pure church.
Concerned Christian: But shouldn’t those who come to church be trying to be pure? To overcome sin? To learn how to walk in God’s ways?
CM: I thought they came to seek Jesus and receive his grace for their lives.
Concerned Christian: Well, of course, Jesus is central, but once we believe in him, aren’t we supposed to change and be different?
CM: I suppose so, but every church with which I’ve been involved is filled with people who have a lot of changing to do. Take my church now: We have some unkind people, some worriers, gossips and others who can’t control their tongues. We have folks who have trouble being honest, some rebellious children and angry parents, people who don’t have their theology straight, lazy people, gluttons, jealous and envious people, some who struggle with pornography, teens who’ve had premarital sex, divorced folks, and probably some spouses who have been unfaithful in one way or another. We have a whole host of sinners at our church! (We even have Republicans! — sorry, that’s a joke.) In fact, I’m pretty sure the only kinds of people we have at our church are sinners. Why should we single out gay people?
Concerned Christian: I don’t think I’d like your church. Sounds like the world to me.
CM: Except you know what? We all come together and Jesus is there. We sing and pray to him, confess our sins. We listen while the Bible is read and preached. We come forward and receive his Body and Blood at the Table. He sends us out forgiven and renewed to love our neighbors.
Concerned Christian: Wait a minute. Are you telling me you would let a gay person take Communion?
CM: Why would I want to withhold Jesus from anyone?
Concerned Christian: Doesn’t the Bible say a person should examine himself before taking Communion?
CM: That’s exactly what it says. People should examine themselves. It doesn’t say I should examine them. That’s why we confess our sins and receive the words of absolution together when we worship.
Concerned Christian: But don’t you think you ought to confront their sin and challenge them to change?
CM: Seems to me the Gospel says God’s kindness leads us to change, and that his grace teaches us to become more like him. I can’t think of a better way of “helping” people than by welcoming them into God’s household, where Jesus is, where the Good News is spoken and enacted in worship each week, and where we try to love each other with forbearance, patience, and mutual service. I don’t think it’s my job to change anybody.
Concerned Christian: Well, I think a pastor ought to be a stronger leader than that. He should preach against sin from the pulpit and have programs and ministries to help people change and overcome sin in their lives. They ought to be warned and challenged and confronted regularly.
CM: Look, I don’t want to sound smug, because I have a lot to learn, but that sounds like trying to control and manage people, and I would rather simply and regularly invite them to Jesus. What you are suggesting sounds more like living under the law than the Gospel.
Concerned Christian: I don’t agree. Give people that kind of freedom and they will abuse it every time.
Oh, and you want more good news? Stop the presses. The Album of the Year has arrived, and I’ve been swooning over it all week.
The Internet Monk Archives 
